BrooklynX writes...

Ok, first up is my 2007 Gathering con jouranl. Yeah, I know it is a year late. Sorry about that Greg.

Gathering 2007 Report

Wednesday, June 20th:

I got up at 4 am for my 6:10 am flight to Baltimore. I read my usual round of web comics, ate and packed up the last of what I needed for the trip. I got to Sacramento International Airport (which oddly doesn't have any international flights) around 5. After finally getting through the check-in line and security check point, my first task was to find the gate and then track down some over priced caffeine.

After getting some gum, I boarded the plane and we took off pretty much right on time. A little over an hour later, I finally got to experience the Salt Lake City airport. Oddly enough, the plane I had flown in on was the same one I had to get back on for the hop into Baltimore. While sitting around, I kept reading "Conquers Legacy" by Timothy Zhan.

Around 9:45, I was back on the plane and around 10:45, I was in the air again. Like the previous short flight, I pretty much stuck to reading the book while occasionally looking out the window. I finished up the book about 20 minutes out and I thought it didn't live up to Zahn's previous work on the Thrawn triology (Star Wars books).

Landing on time, I first called home to say I safely landed. And then I called Mandolin to see where she was. She was going to be a few minutes later, which was fine with me. Finding the luggage claim, it started up as I got there. Maybe 20 bags came out as Mandolin joined me. Waiting, we watched the same suitcase go around about 6 times before the conveyer stopped. About 20 minutes later, it started up again, this time with the rest of the luggage.

After getting my bag, we headed over to her place to drop it and my backpack off. From there, we got dinner and then went to a couple stores to pick up some sandwich material, bottled water and a few other little things for the drive down. Around midnight, we called it a night.

Thursday, June 21st:

Mandolin woke me around 9. We packed up the car and then headed to Dunkin' Donuts, where I got some breakfast. From there, she stopped by a friends house to see if she had left her wrist brace there. No joy. After that was Sprawl-Mart, eh, Wal-Mart for a pillow (mine was not comfortable) and ice for the coolers.

The drive started off fairly well until we hit the Harper's Ferry Crossing over the Potomac River. They were doing some sort of bridge work, which cost us half an hour since there was only one lane open (two lane bridge). After getting into Virginia, we got onto a different highway. And then we crossed into West Virginia and then back into Virginia. We stopped for a short break before getting onto I-81.

After a couple more hours, I took over as the driver after taking a late lunch break. I spent the next 3.5 hours driving. I'll say this, driving along I-81 is as boring to drive along as I-5 between Stockton and the Grapevine; just more trees and hills. After swapping again, I went back into navigator mode for what was left of the drive.

After finding the needed exit in Tennessee, the directions got to be a bit more confusing. Mainly since some of the turns it told us to take didn't exist and it was off when it came to the number of miles. Finally hitting Pigeon Forge, Mandolin and I agreed the main street was similar to the Strip in Las Vegas, Orlando, and a couple other places… lots of lights on the buildings to confuse and distract the drivers. It nearly worked, since we almost missed the light.

We made contact with Kathy, who I asked if I could crash on her hotel floor for the night. As we pulled around into a spot closer to the room, we ran into Gorebash right as he arrived. While going to the elevator, we saw Jen, Karine, and Patrick briefly. Getting rid of our stuff and having a late dinner, Mandolin and I watched a little TV before walking to Walgreens. I bought some Coke and cookies to drink and munch on during the con.

Getting back to the hotel, we watched some TV for a while before calling it a night around 11.

Friday, June 22nd:

Around 7 or so, Mandolin and I got up and decided to shower and go get breakfast. I went for the pancakes and had some Coke to help wake me up. We ended up chatting for a bit before trying to find our badges. All three of us got a quick taste of the rather… odd elevator.

After getting my badge, I was dragged by Gorebash into Karine's art panel. After that, I helped watch the registration desk (yet again). At some point, Flanker and Sara the Great arrived and I got a room from them. I quickly moved my stuff from one room to the other and went back to help out at the reg desk until opening ceremonies.

After Greg's usual spill, Norcumi, Quidnar, Conna and I went to get dinner at the Japanese Steakhouse that was across the street (the name escapes me). I have to agree with Patrick's earlier comment about the crosswalks. Its faster to drive across the street than walk. The food was pretty good and once done, we went back to the hotel and talked for a while.

Saturday, June 23rd:

Flanker, Kathy, Sara, Gside and I decided to go over to the Red Rooster for breakfast. We talked about a variety of things and noticed that a few other fans had shown up there as well. For food, I decided to have the bacon waffle. Eh, it could have used more bacon.

While some of them headed off to the shooting range, I went back to the room for a shower before handing out the forms for folks to fill out for the radio show auditions. There was a small bit of a crowd and at one point, I had to run after somebody because they left their form in the stairwell. Ooops.

Once again, I circulated upstairs and talked with a variety of others before helping with the registration desk for a while. Once again, we got some walk-ins. I had something for lunch, but can't remember what. At one point, I had to grab one of the radio play lists because Greg forgot to write down a couple on one of them. Later on, I watched one of the doors again while the radio play rehearsals occurred. And to fight the boredom, I made an attempt to write.

And when the radio show was set to start, I got to direct folks to go up one floor and and come down the other set of stairs (since the radio play folks were in the way). The show was pretty impressive. After it was over, Conna and I decided to go get dinner. On the way, we stopped at the nearby book store. It was not very impressive. The Science-Fiction section was rather small and it seemed to be more geared for religious themed books.

We went to Hardee's for dinner and the food wasn't all that impressive. We talked for a while before she had to go return something. On my way back to the room, I ran into Flanker, Thom and Sara as they were getting ready to go get dinner. I decided to tag along despite just eating a little earlier.

While they ordered the food, I found a table for us to sit at, which proved challenging since it was rather crowded at the Pizza Hut. We talked about Thom's new commercials, among other things. After that, we headed back to the hotel for the blue mug.

Blue mug had some interesting questions and answers. Granted I can't remember what was asked. I just know at some point it broke up and I went to bed.

Sunday, June 24th:

I had a bowl of cereal for breakfast before heading up the registration desk once again. Did some chatting before heading off to the Bad Guys panel. Of course, Greg didn't want to reveal much, so we only got to learn a little bit and some biology was discussed as well.

The rest of the day was a blur until it was time for the banquet. I sat with Conna, Norcumi, Quindar and I forgot who else. After discovering the tea was way too sweet, we kept trying to dilute it with the ice water. And the food was pretty decent, though the mashed potatoes could used far less butter.

The Q & A was also pretty decent, though one person kept asking tons of Owen/ Puck questions (if I remember right). We kept exchanging looks with another table and started to hope some other folks would ask questions. After a while, it broke up so folks could get ready for the masquerade.

There was some pretty good costumes this year. I don't remember who got what award, other than Flanker getting the Thom Adcox Memorial Award. Per Duncan's and Guan's requests, I tried to take a number of pictures. Some of us moved into the other room while others danced.

Going back to my room, I got my Scooby Doo deck of playing cards and Scooby Doo Uno deck as well. We played a few rounds of Texas Hold 'Em before playing Uno. We had quite a bit of fun playing and at one point, Thom joined us. After a while, I doubt he liked me dropping draw twos and fours on him.

After a while, the game broke up and I went to get money from the ATM to pay Flanker for the room. Naturally, it was raining and none of the ATMs close by were working. After heading back to the room, I decided to pack what I could and fell asleep.

Monday June 25th:

I got up early to take a shower, pack and eat breakfast. A quick check found that the ATMs were still down, but Mandolin was able to loan me the $30 I needed to pay off Flanker. Mandi and I said goodbye to a number of folks before starting our 9 hour drive back to Baltimore.

The drive was rather uneventful, though we ran into a pair of thunderstorms along the way. And amusingly, we noticed that US 11 crisscrossed I-81 around 26 times. After managing to avoid most of the bad traffic, we arrived at her house. We dropped off our luggage, turned on the A/C and went out to get some dinner. In this case, we went to a pizza place and it was pretty good.

Back at her place, we decided to unwind by chatting and watching some anime. I don't remember what we watched, but it was nice getting to bounce some writing ideas off of her.

Tuesday June 26th:

Mandolin and I spent part of the day trying to see if we could find a window A/C that would fit in her home office. Didn't have any luck since most of them were big to either fit or the cover for the hose (unit that sat on the floor) that fit into the window was too large.

Stopping off to get some food and going to an ATM, I paid her off before we ended up back at her place to decompress for the rest of the day. Once again, we spent it talking and watching anime, this time "Trigun."

Wednesday June 27th:

Mandolin went to work while I finished packing for the flight home. I finished watching "Trigun" and watched the end of an "Outer Limits" episode. At 11:15, she dropped me off at the airport where we said goodbye. Check-in for the flight took forever and so did the security line.

Before headed down to my gate, which was at the far end of the terminal, I got some cash from an ATM and picked up a shot glass to add to my collection. Seeing that I still had about 20 minutes before they started boarding, I got Wendy's for lunch.

For the flight down to Atlanta, I pulled out Tom Clancy's book "Without Remorse." I spent most of time in Atlanta reading while waiting for the flight into Sacramento. On this plane, their were TVs in the seatback. The choices weren't all that great and the music selection could use some work. Spent more time reading and realized that I had picked up a cold somewhere along the line.

The flight landed a few minutes early, bringing another Gathering trip to a close. And it started the quest to save up for the 2008 Gathering.

K9 the First writes...

"""Greg responds...

Family's good, thanks.

Camouflage... I don't know. Maybe that helps, but you don't need it to explain stone sleep evolution."""

True, but I'm the kind of guy who soaks this kind of stuff like a sponge. I guess I was pseudo-inspired by that Animal Planet documentary 'Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real', where they figured all the dragon stuff out from Evolutiary relatives(crocs and gators) to Fire breathing.

"""Stone sleep is a huge protection against predators in the pre-tool age. Claws and teeth don't bite through stone (or rather the organic stone-like substance that Gargoyles turn into). Even scent is altered. A stone gargoyle is of little interest to and in almost no danger from other animals. It's not until Humans developed tools -- thousands of years after Gargoyles evolved -- that stone sleep became a liability."""

Yes, I figured as much. Though the scent thing is surprisingly new to me. Why, I do not know. *shrugs*

Grey Wolf writes...

June 24th

We missed open story reading because Dad had some shopping he wanted to get done. But because I'm SUCH a good daughter, I didn't complain. The fact that he bribed me with a chocolate milkshake didn't hurt either. Pigeon Forge is like one huge, open-air mall; it's amazing what they can cram into three miles of land.

Dad and I got back in time for the Gargoyles Physiology and Culture Open Discussion. I think that may have been my dad's favorite part, he was impressed how much thought went into the scientific and cultural aspect of the characters. I was particually intrested in gargoyle customs, but by the end, I also was convinced the common ansestor of gargoyles and gargbeasts must have been pretty creepy looking. I like creepy.

I think I was hyperventilating when the Bad Guys Panel came up. The animated preview was fun to watch because we could hear the actors' voices again. We didn't get to learn a whole lot, but we were really pumped up. I think that was the point.
By the way, I will be rooting so hard for Yama.

At the banquet, there was some REALLY good food and a table full of nice people to talk to. I was the youngest person stting there, but I kept up pretty well. Most of the questions that came up I hadn't even thought of. Greg had to remind the guests at a point that it was not a 'blue' Q&A, by the adults who were laughing I guessed I had learned a new term. Anyway, we had a lot of fun and I was saddened when Dad and I had to leave early to go back to the cabin. I doubt I'll be able to make it to Chicago, but if I can, I will!

Grey Wolf writes...

Sorry it's so late, the computer ate my fist copy. But better late then never I suppose.

June 21st

My mom had already left for work when I got up and, thank God, so had my brother. Dad and I had a quiet couple of hours before hitting the road. We actually went along the mountain range, so the scenery was pretty, but nothing too remarkable happened. We stopped by VA Tech so my dad could say hi to an old student, and show me the lamp post he ran into during a foot race. The memorial was still in the works when we got there.

It was almost sundown when we arrived at the cabin we would spend the night in. Dad pulled out a guide book and the convention schedual, explaining to me he had a few things he wanted to see and that I should prioratize when I wanted to be at the Gathering.
"Why didn't we do any of this today?" I asked.
"Because we're staying here tonight, and these are about 300 miles away in Tenessee."
"Oh, good point."
"But aside from that minor detail; we're on the same page, right?"

June 22nd

We left early, and despite spending hours in the car, I was suprisingly patient. Until we were only fifteen minutes away. There might still be finger marks where I gripped the door handle; I'll have to check.

Dad and I actually went to the convention before checking into our hotel. Our first lesson: Never, under any cercumstances, use the elevator!

We wandered about in the registration room and met some really nice people. Even Dad was impressed by the artwork and I was uncharacteristly talkative when I met the other con-goers. Dad tapped me on the shoulder...
"Hey, Rach, that guy in the t-shirt-- Isn't that your hero?"
I looked over my shoulder. Yeah, my dad was right, that was Greg Weisman.
"Go on, get his autograph," Dad urged. I stepped up to the table, greeted him, and managed to stutter something close enough to 'Could you sign this please?' that Greg could understand me. Heh, ^^;

I regained my composure in time for the Radio Play Auditions. I could do the Southern and Scotish accents okay, but after doing the Scotish, I couldn't make the British accent work. Dang. In line a met another girl close to my age who also had an autism spectrum disorder, it was easy to talk to her, so that was fun.

I got to stay through Opening Ceremonies, but had to leave before the music video contest.
The Team Atlantis episode was really cool, even if it wasn't all animated.

June 23rd

We missed the Radio Play Casting by a little, but I found out I was in it. The Mug-A-Guest with Greg was fun, and I asked a few questions my mom wanted to know too since she couldn't make it. Dad went out for lunch during the Radio Play Rehearsals, and just made it back in time for the Radio Play itself. I was Maggie the Cat; I got a little nervous, and the reason the grunt when the debris fell on her sounded so weird was because I acctually choked for a second. It work well though.

When Dad and I came back from having chili dogs, we ran into Greg and a group of con-goers by the crosswalk. I got really happy when I was told I did a good job, and I looked forward to telling my family they could see it on You-Tube soon. I kept my lips sealed about the content of issue 5 though.

End part one

Jurgan writes...

We had been traveling for about a week before the convention, camping in the Smoky Mountains area and south Kentucky, as well as taking in the scenery at Nashville. Anyone who finds my journals insanely entertaining and wishes to see more of my stellar wit (including a hilarious account of getting hopelessly lost in rural Kentucky at night) can go to www.freewebs.com/jurgan6, where I'll have the rest posted in a few days. And now, to slide this in under the deadline.

Note: Heather = Yami Raven, Rob = Jurgan

Friday, June 22

Given as it was the second longest day of the year, we were on the east edge of Central Time, and we were in a tent, the sun woke us up at 5:30 A.M. We'd planned on getting up at 7:00, but when I saw the light, I thought it might be 7:00. But we had a long drive, and we were pretty well awake, so we decided to just get up and get a move on. We bought some donuts at a gas station and drove east across a national forest in Kentucky, then south to Pigeon Forge. Fortunately, after five days of travel we'd gotten past all of our wacky driving mishaps and had a fairly uneventful trip. Our directions had gotten lost, so there was no chance of Mapquest screwing us up again, but we'd seen the Grand Resort when we drove through on Tuesday, and we were able to find it again without much trouble.

We got to the hotel at about 1:30, and they said that they wouldn't have our room ready until 2:00, so we drove down the street to a Chinese buffet. The food was pretty good, and the TV was playing a loop of some bizarre Chinese acrobats performing feats of superhuman precision (wow, I sound like an ad). We then went back, checked into our room, and carried our stuff upstairs. Typically, Heather wanted to make our first stop the dealer's room, so we checked in to the con and then looked at the goodies. I immediately spotted an RPG related shirt that was utterly hilarious and perfectly fitting with my RPG personality, so I didn't even try to resist the urge to buy it.

Shortly thereafter, it was time for opening ceremonies. Learning our lesson from last year, we both went to the bathroom beforehand. When we got down, we saw that the TV was too close to the ground for everyone to see from their chairs, so we quickly moved the chairs to the sides and sat on the floor. Hey, we're an informal bunch. After announcements, Greg started his usual spiel, calling it "The Rocky Horror Gargoyles show," an apt comparison which I'd never thought of/heard before. Last year, Greg kept trying to encourage people who'd already seen it to leave, but I think he's accepted that that's not going to happen. So we saw the usual fun stuff, heard some good, or at least possibly good, news about the comic and DVD's, but by the time it was over it was too late to show the music videos. I never got to see any of them. I guess we ate dinner and went to bed, though I can't for the life of me remember what we had- probably something informal like sandwiches. Heather fell asleep unexpectedly, and so did I a few minutes later.

Saturday, June 23

I got up by 10:00 or so because I wanted to audition for the Radio Play. I ran to a "quaint" old-time diner and brought back lunch (note: I may be getting when we ate which meals mixed up, but it doesn't really matter. If you're accused of a crime, though, I may not be your best witness). Heather stayed in the room, because there wasn't anything she was interested in, and after a week's camping, a bed is hard to say no to. At the auditions, I was a bit intimidated, because I still remember trying out in 2002 and bombing terribly. A large crowd sat on the stairs, and we had a lot of fun talking, though we only had a couple scripts to share. I argued with some girls about how Inuyasha would have been better if it had taken lessons from Gargoyles. At one point, I made some joke referencing a certain character from TGC whose name must not be mentioned (let's just say it was mentioned over forty times in one episode). A few people felt my faux pas had to be punished, and started discussing whether it would be more appropriate and/or efficient to decapitate me or simply remove my larynx. That's the sort of conversation I find very amusing. I was one of the last to audition, and I feel I did a lot better than before, reading the part of Brooklyn instead of Xanatos. Greg said I did "great!"

I went back to the room for a while, and either went to get lunch or ate some leftovers (I honestly can't remember when I got the food). I went back down at 2:00 for the world-building for fantasy/sci-fi fan panel. I almost always go to the fan panels, except for the art ones. We talked about a lot of good stuff, though I can't really remember much of it now. I was also spending the entire panel wondering if I'd made the Radio Play cut, since I hadn't had time to check beforehand. Once the panel ended, I quickly ran to check the casting sheet, and was thrilled to find I'd made it! Of course, it turned out that there were more parts than people, so I made it by default, but I like to think I did well enough to merit it. I ran back to the room long enough to tell Heather, and then ran back down for rehearsal. Greg had us set up the chairs in a very specific pattern, and then had us sit in an even more specific arrangement. Once we were all seated, we found out that we were performing issues 3, 4, and 5 of Gargoyles comicbook. Of course, we were all thrilled by that revelation, and I'm sure many of us were tempted to flip to the end to see what happened, but I stayed with the cast. I was Matt Bluestone, and my scene was early on in the play. Greg had to give me a note, calling for "Matt," and it took me a minute to realize who he was talking to. Apparently "Tri Chung" is pronounced "try," not "tree." Huh. Anyway, we went through the play, and sat on the edges of our chairs throughout act three. When we found out about the Illuminati's triangular structure from 1 to 36, as a mathematician I immediately set about calculating how many total members there were, although I didn't expect it to be significant. I could have done it in my head (18*37- half the last number times one more than the last number), but it was distracting me from the story, so I pulled out my phone calculator. 666. Hmm, maybe it is significant. The "Andrew Johnson" line got a big laugh at rehearsal, though less of a response in the play. And, of course, "Nine." When we finished the rehearsal, we were given a twenty minute break. Heather had been unsure of whether to come, but when I told her what we were performing (without spoilers), she decided to come. Then I ran back downstairs, where several cast members were mulling over the revelations we'd just had. The conversation led me to come up with a theory for who number 1 is (this is why I love fan speculation- together we come up with better ideas than we would individually; whole vs. sum of parts). Obviously, I can't put speculation in an Ask Greg entry, but I convinced a number of people, including Greg Bishansky.

The play itself went very well. The audience was barely larger than the cast. Heather got a couple pictures of me reading my lines, but I don't think they came out. Fortunately, Youtube has the whole thing. Thom Adcox got people rolling on the floor every freaking time he opened his mouth. We got laughs at the right moments, and a very satisfying gasp at the end.

After the play, Heather and I went to dinner at Kinkaku, a sushi/hibachi restaurant across the street. We had just sushi, and it was pretty good. Still not my all-time favorite (that'd be Toyo, in Rock Hill, SC), but it was a good meal.

We hung around for a while, and then went to the Blue Mug. On average, the questions started out pretty dark blue and gradually paled as the night went on. I had a couple terribly mild questions, including one Heather wanted to ask, but she left before she got a chance. Thom pulled his pants down to show his tattoo and repeated his infamous "Monsigneur Nelson" joke. I'm still not sure I get the joke, but it's fun to watch.

After Thom left at about 1:30, most of the people scattered. My favorite thing to do at cons is just sitting around talking to people, so I gravitated to the small group sitting around Greg. Jen Anderson was there, and I think Gorebash, but I can't remember any others. Next year I should really write this stuff down immediately, instead of trying to remember it a month later. My biggest regret is that I can't remember who all the people I met were. Anyway, we sat around telling stories. I mostly just listened, since I'm still relatively new to the cons and didn't want to butt in to other people's conversations. All the others knew each other pretty well, and I did feel a little intimidated at first, but it was pretty easy to talk after a while. We had one conversation about which was worse: hurricanes, tornados, or earthquakes. Jen told a story about getting on a plane by pretending to be engaged to Thom. Greg lay down on some chairs half-asleep, waking up occasionally to tell people who called him that he was not a taxi company and they needed to enter a different area code. Eventually, Greg decided he was going to bed, and the rest of the group broke up.

That evening summed up the con for me. Although there were far fewer guests and events than last year, I felt like I really got to know the people who were there a lot better. I'm really starting to feel like I'm part of these cons, instead of just a guest watching them. I got to meet some new people, whom I'll hopefully see again next year.

Part 2 in another post, assuming I get it done before the queue closes.

Matt writes...

So, here was Matt, enjoying his evening, finishing up dinner and dishes and about to settle down to a good book before bedtime when alas he decides to peak into the Comment Room and realizes the Ask Greg queue closes in mere hours (so he gathers) and he has forgotten to post his 2007 Gathering Journal!!!

So in a mad rush to finish he begins to type. Without further ado...

Friday:

After barely arranging to get Friday off work and saying the goodbyes to my Jason (the boyfriend who will probably attend G '08 with me) I hit the road around 5 AM CT. It had been a while since I had a nice road trip and there is always that fun feeling about leaving when it is still dark outside. Long (and boring) story short, I arrived in the town of Pigeon Forge at about 3:15 PM ET. My first impression of the town was that it seemed to be brimming with traffic and pancake houses. I was relieved to discover the hotel without incident (aside from the aforementioned traffic) and checked in. I quickly found my room, threw down my stuff and made my way to the convention area. I found it a good sign that right after checking in at the Staff table, I ran back to my room to leave some stuff there and on my way back ran into Greg Weisman himself. I was amazed that Greg seemed to remember me by face alone (or maybe he read my badge, but he seemed like he knew me). I wish I had his talent of face/name recognition. I'd only met him once before briefly in 2002. Anyway, Greg tried to convince me to try out for the Radio Play. I had considered it for months, but I greatly enjoy listening to the production so I opted out. Perhaps next year. I'll think about it. Greg seemed in a hurry for something and I made my way back to the art room/dealer's room area. On the way I ran into Harvester of Eyes. We hadn't met before and chatted about Putt-Putt golf a bit and how he dislikes it and then I finally made it back to the main convention room. As I was looking around the wares, I noticed one space left on the sign up sheet for Mug-A-Guest with Greg and I eagerly signed up. I went to examine the art, which was naturally quite good. There were a few really fun pieces, kudos to those who submitted art. I was happily surprised to see a few sample pages for Issue #5. I felt almost guilty seeing Brook's costume, Dr. Sato and Mary and Finella. Of course, at the time I didn't know that I was going to soon learn much more about Issue #5. Ran into Greg X and chatted about the comics, the Comment Room and other silliness for a bit.
The time for Opening Ceremonies came around and I eagerly found a good seat... of course, not long afterwards I found myself sitting on the floor. It was all very kindergarten story/naptime-esque.
I don't care how many times Greg has been through the Opening Ceremonies stuff, I loved seeing and hearing it all. However, I guess Greg felt that he needed to add something new to the routine, so he proceeded to destroy the hotel podium to the delight and amusement of the con-goers .
After the end of Opening Ceremonies, I was famished and made my way to dinner at Shoney's across the street. I went back to my room and laid on the bed and enjoyed that "I'm on vacation" feeling for a while and then, feeling fat, went swimming to burn off the Shoney's. Exhausted, I went back to the room and passed out.

Saturday:

Slept pretty late. Reveled in the feeling of not waking up to an alarm. Took my time getting ready and went down to the complimentary breakfast. Finding no fruit in sight, I shrugged and gorged on biscuits and gravy like I hadn't done in years. Vacation, right?
I made my way back to the con and attended the "Fan to Pro" panel with Karine (and Samuel). I felt guilty again when Karine accidently let slip Quincy's name, but that was nothing compared to later. Anyway, the panel was great, I really enjoyed listening to Karine and there were some great questions. Even though I'm not much of an artist, it was fun. After that I had the Mug with Greg. This was a lot of fun and it really made me realize why the Gathering is so great. When a group of people can sit in an (ever growing) circle (in person!) and chat about Gargoyles, it makes me feel a great sense of community which is only faintly felt via the internet community. Somehow Greg revealed to us that the Jogger is Billy and Susan's uncle. Not sure how we got that out of him, but I thought it was a neat tidbit.
After the Mug, I decided I needed/wanted a walk so I wandered down to Taco Bell for lunch and ended up counteracting the purpose for the walk there when I got a big ole quesadilla thing... ugh, I ate too much on this trip.
I waddled back to the hotel with enough time to get a great seat for the Radio Play. Wow, that was fun. To have brand new canon material revealed to us as a big group like that was just awesome. Something I haven't felt since I was watching the episodes as the came out 11 years ago with grade school friends and talking about them at school. So much fun. Thom Adcox was hilarious as Brentwood (great casting there, ha!), but I was also impressed by a lot of other people, namely Phoenix-Talon as Elisa. Honestly, I can't read the line "I'm a part of this clan. Nothing will ever change that." without hearing Phoenix-Talon. I should be hearing Salli Richardson, I know, but her Radio Play counterpart deserves a round of applause. Great job.
After the Radio Play I congratulated Greg on a great job and then excused myself to call my friend Ryan (another Gargoyles fan who couldn't attend due to med-school) and told him exactly nothing except that I heard the script for Issue #5. He was good about it, but I couldn't stop gushing about how great it was so I decided to spare him (and spot tempting myself) and just get back to the convention. [On a side note, I happened to witness the most interesting scenario involving a baby duck and a fisherman in the stream behind the hotel during this phone conversation. But that, as they say, is a story for another day...]
I went back and made my way to MGT3K, which was one of my favorite events at G'02. Had a lot of fun making fun of the episodes (and Greg's intros for the eps). I truly do feel, however, that the Goliath Chronicles was made for MGT3K, and hope to see TGC in that (and only that) venue at future Gatherings.
Next came the Blue Mug. Never attended that before and I was not disappointed. Goliath's genitalia, Thom Adcox removing his pants and humping a fan (separate incidents of course), and lots of pornographic Gargoyles art and video clips. And I hear this was a MILD year. Yikes. Lot of fun though. I didn't want to miss a minute of it so I remained even though I was very sleepy. Found myself attempting to flirt with Thom from across the room (can't help it, he's cute) but nothing came of that (truly for the best) and after the Mug broke up, I went back to my room to sleep. Instead, on a whim, I jumped in the pool and swam around until the thought of swimming in the dark had me totally freaked out ( I was actually getting "the shivers" imagining monsters below me in the darkness). Well aware of my exhaustion, I went to my room and slept.

Sunday:

Woke up early and got things packed up. I needed to be on the road asap, cuz I had to get back home for stuff on Monday.
Fortunately, I had time for a quick breakfast at that Rooster pace next door. Finally had some fruit for breakfast, although the restaurant insisted on immersing it in some sort of sugary fruit syrup. Went back to the con and listened to a couple of the open-story stuff. Some people had some pretty good stuff, and the stillness of the room and the singular voice was refreshing after the Blue Mug the night before.
Next attended a panel I'd been waiting for all weekend; Gargoyles Physiology and Culture. Though I certainly disagreed with a lot of the ideas floating around that panel (especially involving Gargate evolution), I had a great time. It was nice to actually be able to have that conversation outside of the Comment Room. And we all agreed, for various reasons, that gargoyle eggs do in fact need to be turned. I felt that this consensus, minor though it was, was a good place for us to move to the culture part of the panel. I was surprised that I ended up enjoying this part of the panel even more. Greg really inspires me when he talks about Gargoyle culture. It really was fascinating and wonderful stuff, and Greg explained his thoughts so well. It made me feel I got a glimpse, for a moment, into that universe Greg is always tapping into.
After the panel, most of us moved on to the "Bad Guys" panel. Turned out that Greg, naturally, wasn't ready to reveal much there and the panel turned into a Marketing seminar. Not much I can say about that that others have not already.
After the so called "Bad Guys" panel ended, I realized I needed to hit the road. I said my goodbyes to Greg and a few others and made my way back home. I arrived in my apartment in St. Louis very very late Sunday night (Monday morning?).

It was a great trip and I'm thrilled that the Gathering next year will be even closer! Hopefully, I'll be able to bring my friend Ryan and boyfriend Jason along next year, but I know I'll be there at least.
Now, I need to get this posted before the queue closes again.
Thanks Greg, Thom, Karine, the entire Gathering Staff and everyone who came! It was a lot of fun!

Kayote writes...

Gathering Journal

Thurs, June 21st
I got into Nashville about 7:30 Central Time. I hope Southwest fun flights or whatever they're called connect to Chicago next year, cause it was cheap as hell and best of all there weren't any delays!
I waited around for a couple hours for Kirsten (Babyfey) and Demona Taina, who was on her first trip to the continental US from Puerto Rico. We all flew into Nashville, so we rented a car and drove to Knoxville. For some reason I was surprised that they only had country music stations in Tennesse.
Taina was amazed at how big everything was. Apparently the 3 hour drive was longer than it took to cross Puerto Rico.
Kristen had made reservations for us at a motel outside Knoxville. It was right off the highway, and I was really happy when I saw the the nice looking place with the big banner that read "Free Breakfast". But she had booked us at the seedy motel behind it. The sun never seemed to go down that night (turned out it was the solstice), and considering the kind of place we were in, I kind of felt like we were in a Twilight Zone episode. Somehow I managed to get a good night's sleep on the cardboard mattress.

Fri, June 22nd
We got up early and picked up Kristen's friend at the Knoxville airport, ate pancakes for breakfast, then drove to Pigeon Forge. The place is like Vegas except without all the stuff that "stays in Vegas". Traffic was terrible but we managed get to the hotel eventually.
I hung out in the art room for awhile, then got lunch with some other people (I can't remember for the life me who- I think it was Aaron, Lynati, Jade Griffin and Leo) at this pizza place that they had coupons for in the art room.
Opening ceremonies was fun as always, and it was good to see so many new people had showed up.
We went to the minigolf place down the street after that, and had our asses throughly handed to us by the course. Thank for doing the math for me, cause we would have been there for another hour if I had done it myself.
Then we ran across the street en-mass (felt like we were playing real-life Frogger) and got dinner at the restaurant where we couldn't find the door. They had some great catfish.
Then we ran across the street again, and we hung around in the 2B room. Hudson ranted about random subjects, which was hilarious. I can't remember the guy's name, but man did he do a good Christopher Walkin impression. We tried to have him order pizza in that voice. Mara, Lynati, and yet another person I can't recall know all the words to Rent. All I knew was the words to the Simpsons parody of it. Some people got pizza from the place we'd eaten before (we recommended it and still had some coupons left). The delivery guy ripped us off majorly and the pizza wasn't that great either.

Sat, June 23rd
I got up early, and walked downstairs in a rather zombiefied state, ate some pancakes and went shooting with Flanker, Sarah, Leo, Dtaina, Sadisitc Cow, and some others. It was a lot of fun and Leo is a killing machine. Someone made the mistakes of trying to explain what a gargoyle is to they guy who owned the shooting range.
I went to a few panels after that, then the radio play which was great! Thom Adcox will never live now down "Thailog Smart!"
I went to minigolf with some people who's names I, again, can't remember. That was a mistake. It kicked my ass worse then the night before, and I missed MGT3K, which is my favorite panel at Gatherings.
The Blue Mug was fun, but I'm starting to think that we're running out of 'adult' questions ask (particularly after last year-wow!). And we didn't get kicked out of the room this year- a first for as long I've been going to Gatherings!

Sun, June 24th
I woke up early again and had pancakes (detecting a trend?). I went to a few panels, and then ended up at the banquet, which was very good this year, and there was plenty for 2nds and 3rds this time! Some how I got the impression though, that most of people wait staff there were children of Hotel employees who were being forced into helping. Somehow we started talking about the masquerade, and I ended up being dragged to Walmart to buy stuff for my Severius costume. The Masque was alot of fun- the guy in the full-body gargoyle suit was amazing. I offered Hudson $5 to say "Luke, I am your father" while he was dressed in his full SWAT gear. People kept having my throw my head back and kackle (I have no idea how to spell that and neither does the spellchecker) so they could take pictures. And then there was that other stuff (highlights of the masque!) which I'm sure is now on YouTube.
I ended up talking fanfiction with Lynati in her room (I wish I had the time to be as detail obsessed as she is), and working on the Myst (I don't really know what that it, but it was fun to work on) for somebody's new fanfiction.

Mon, June 25th
I slept in a little, and well, are pancakes the legally mandated breakfast food of Pigeon Forge or something? Seriously.
I wish had rained that night (or that the roof hadn't leaked), because i didn't get a chance to vote on the art show.
I don't recall to much of closing ceremonies (I was too tired). Kristen and I left shortly afterward and drove back to Nashville were caught our flights out.

All in all, even after leaking roof and such, it was still the best gathering I've ever been to.

And I apologize to everyone whose name I forgot. I can never remember people's names when I need to.

Yami Raven writes...

My Con Journal 2007

Note: I was feeling sick pretty much the whole time, so I didn't really do much...

June 22, 2007

We drove for about 7 hours before we got to the hotel. We went to lunch at a Chinese buffet down the road. I went to the dealer's room right after we got our badges. I bought a zombie shirt and a plush Anubis. Then, Rob and I went to the Opening Ceremonies. It was fun to see all the new people who came this year. After the ceremonies were over, we went back to the room to rest and eat dinner.

June 23

I again went and bought nice stuff at the dealer's room, then Rob and I went to the radio play. Rob got to play the part of Matt Bluestone. Everyone did a wonderful job! There was a spoiler for the 5th issue of the comic. It just goes to show that there are perks to coming to the Gathering. After that, we went to get some sushi at Kinkaku down the road. After dinner, we came back to the hotel for the blue mug. Thom humped a guest and showed off his tattoo. I wasn't feeling well, so I left the mug early and went to sleep.

June 24

Today we went to the Physiology panel and talked about how gargoyles raise their young. It was very interesting. Afterwards, I went back to the room to rest and have lunch. Later, I went to the dealer's room yet again and bought a sushi charm bracelet. We went to a steak buffet place for dinner, which wasn't very good and definitely not worth the money. On the way back to the room, we saw Greg and Thom playing air hockey. Rob played against Hudson, and I played against Flanker. Rob lost his match by one point. I beat (or according to him "slaughtered like a spring lamb") Flanker by one point. It was so fun to be able to go against someone new for a change. After the match with him, I was exhausted, but Greg asked me to play, and you just can't say no to the MF Garg Master. I had my ass handed to me, but that was because I was tired. Assuming we make it to next year's Gathering I would like to take him on again to see what I would do when I was at my best. It was so much fun! After our matches, we watched a few other people play, then went to the Masquerade. There weren't many contestants this year, but all the costumes were wonderful. I especially liked the Gargoyle costume that took Best in Show. After the contest, I started feeling sick, so I went to bed.

June 25

Today was the last day of the Gathering. The first thing we did was go to the auction/signing. I got Greg and Thom to sign the cover of my program. After that, was talked to some people in the art room while we waited for closing ceremonies. We were encouraged to come back next year. We will do that if we have enough money. We are getting married 7 days before the Gathering. We will be the only people I know who have had their honeymoon at a convention! So, the next time you see me, I will be a happily married Garg fan! ^_^

Jade Griffin writes...

This be my con journal for the year:) A bit abbreviated since I don't want to snore anyone out:)

I travel every year I can make it, from Reno, NV to wherever the con happens to be: from Montreal, Canada to my home state to Williamsburg, WV to Fort Worth, TX. Why? Read on:)

I was approached by email by the wonderful Eden asking if I could be on the Con Staff this year. Boy, would I! No, I am not insane:) So I told my husband I was going and got my tickets and travel plans. The Gathering of the Gargoyles 2007 would be in Pigeon Forge, TN. I would fly to Memphis, TN and drive the 6 hours on a mini road trip with three other great people: Admiral Trimm, Beedoo!, and Arno. And that's exactly how it happened. As soon as I got off the plane, I jumped in Trimm's jeep and we were off! It actually took 8 hours, given the dumb construction. Bah. Silly humans.

Arriving at the hotel, which was a lot less than we anticipated it would be --- in size, not price -- I got fed up w/ them and headed over to the main hotel to find the con suite and my fellow staffers (we had been moved to a hotel across the street due to some overbooking or some such nonsense). Got my registration packet, shirt, badge, etc. and headed back for sleep around 12am local time.

Day one was setting up the art show and sitting in the art room for most of the day. This would be the majority of my task while the Art Show Coordinator this year: babysit the art room. No biggie. Most of the Con I am either in a panel or in the art room anyway drawing up a storm. I learned the hard way being the Art Show Coordinator left little room for actually drawing while most of it went to coordinating, lol.

Boy, did we have a lot of new people this Con. So many new hands raised at Opening Ceremonies, it was awesome!! Met some neat new people, too:)

I hosted three panels while at the Con: Gargoyles Physiology and Culture with Greg Weisman and Lynati, Mystery Gargoyle Theater 3000, and an Open Writing session and discussion panel (i won the writing contest this year. Wee!!). It was a blast, despite hassles with elevators and hotel personnel. And me, Beedoo!, Trimm, and Arno finally got a room in the right hotel. Yay!

We basically ignored the bad hotel stuff until it culminated into a bit of a fiasco. The Masquerade and dance is a big event at our Con. Earlier in the day, the women's restroom next door had flooded. The hotel staff was fairly prompt in coming to dry (and not clean) the carpet but it was still a bad event... In the midst of our costumed frolicking and boogying, someone ran in and said they needed volunteers because the art show/dealer's room roof was leaking-- on top of everything in the room! We ushered our decked out behinds up to the art show/dealer's room and lo and behold, the ceiling was leaking! It had rained earlier that day. It being around 10pm local time and the dealers all gone to bed, plus the hotel staff unwilling to send anyone to help us move our stuff, we took matters into our own hands! Hudson coordinating this awesome march, approximately 25 con-goers (and yes I mean fans!) hupped to it and moved all of the dealer's merchandise including thousands of dollars of comic books to the room next door. Bad on top of worse... Though our move occurred in about 10 minutes, we learned that the next room also had a leaky ceiling!! Egads, people! So, improvisation among such brilliant minds as ours isn't hard to find. We took every table stacked the merchandise on one, and put another table over that table to shield it. All but the comic books. Someone brought in their own tarp and someone got some drop cloths to put over the rest of the delicate merchandise. Saved! As for the artwork, the set-up was promptly broken down, the artwork sorted by artist, purchased, auction, etc. and taken to the safe haven of the blessed con suite. All hail the snacks!

Did such dark moments hamper our most awesome Con? Naw:) You cannot believe the aura of goodness from this convention. It is truly the best experience anyone will ever have of a fandom. We pull together like we've known each other for decades, good friends who've known each other face to face forever, and some of us have just met:) It makes fun stories to tell each other afterwards. It really was a great Con despite the ... interesting... hotel. Hanging with the rest of the fans, our wonderful guests, hosting a panel beside Greg Weisman, laughing all night with Arno, Trimm, Beedoo!, and so many others... Oh, and of course the Blue Mug;P You will not find a better group of people drawn together under the banner of fandom and that's the truth. So, join us, won't you? It's a family reunion where you don't hate any of your relatives. It's great and you GOTTA come. That's my soap box:) Gargs forever! And don't forget to get the comic books!!

JEB writes...

Gathering Journal - Monday, June 25, 2007

Got up a bit earlier than the previous days, so I could take advantage of the "all-you-can-eat" pancakes coupon I was provided. It turned out "all-you-can-eat" wound up being four. But they were tasty and filling indeed.

My next stop was the auction, in which many delightful items were offered, although much of the early bidding seemed a smidge subdued. I only bid on one item, as most of the items I wanted moved out of my range. I was tempted by a few items in particular - a Phoenix Gate medallion, and the promo posters for the Gargoyles trade paperback and the first issue of Bad Guys.

As the auction ended, it seemed no one had anything in particular to do until closing ceremonies (save Greg, who went off to work), so most of us hung around chatting. (I had some nice conversation bits with Greg B., Fan and Kathy Pogge, myself.) While I'd already signed up for G2K8, I decided to take the opportunity to snag a promotional shirt, which I may be wearing to an upcoming convention (although, it was suggested I write the URL for the Gathering site on there first - my fannish loyalty is conflicting with my collector's instincts there). As closing ceremonies neared, Hudson took over the microphone for a pseudo-rant; after a bit, I ducked out to my room until the actual closing ceremonies were due to begin.

The ceremonies - as usual - felt very much like a cool-down; which, of course, they essentially are. Various thank yous, and well-deserved applause, and awards were distributed. But the original post-ceremonies plan - a visit to Dollywood - was nipped in the bud by a brief but notable downpour. So new plans were made to head to a local laser tag parlor for a game.

A group of 20 people, including Greg W., Greg B., Hudson, Chloe, GSide, King Cobra, Vid the Kid, Kathy Pogge, Halloweenking, Brant Wells, IRC Goliath, myself and several others headed to Ultrazone. We were split into two groups of 10, and while we waited our turn, another ferocious air hockey competition got underway with Greg and company. Me, I decided to play some skeeball and practice my shooting before I headed in.

The actual game itself was awesome - very atmospheric, with lots of cover and sniper positions, and a mist that doubled as concealment and a means for the lasers to become visible. In something that seems unusual for laser tag, this was a free-for-all match, where everyone was out for themselves. My group included Greg W., Greg B., GSide, Kathy Pogge, Halloweenking, and three non-Gargoyles fans: a mother and her two young kids (who, unlike everyone else, worked as a team). I'd only played one game of laser tag before this, and this vastly surpassed that game - I had great fun, and I suspect others were as well, judging from the smiles. To my vast surprise, I won the game, earning the most points if not the highest accuracy (my codename: "Super Nova").

However, the exertion of the game immediately sent Greg W.'s group out for some drinks at the Walgreens, where we encountered a clerk who was also a fan of the show. (999 to go, as one said.) Greg decided he wanted to seek out a Baskin-Robbins a good ways down the street, in the expectation that we'd all be hungry enough by then for dinner. At that point, the other group of ten, who were nearly left behind, caught up. We settled on a BBQ place called Corky's, where our group's size left the staff a bit stunned at first. Split between two tables, I sat nearest to, and chatted the most with, Brant Wells and friend (whose name I missed, sorry!), Vid the Kid, King Cobra, Halloweenking and GSide. My dinner was a delicious hickory burger.

Our ice-cream plans were scrapped when Greg W.'s table got dessert following their dinner. Heading back, I nearly went with Hudson's go-kart-seeking group, before deciding to go back to the hotel instead. We said our goodbyes to Greg W. and one another, and went our separate ways. To me, these moments felt like the true end of the Gathering 2007.

I found ways to kill the time - namely, a visit to the nearby Book Warehouse for some, well, books, as well as a road atlas. Also snagged some dessert - a moon pie and an ice cream sandwich - and coordinated the return trip with my dad (who suggested an alternate route home through Harper's Ferry) and Greg B. (while we watched a rather odd episode of South Park). Packed my bags, and prepared for an early day Tuesday...

JEB writes...

Gathering Journal - Sunday, June 24, 2007

Got up, went out and ate, then went to the con suite to hang out. Showed off my card game to A Fan on his request. A Wii was set up and running, so I played a few rounds of Virtual Console Super Mario Kart 64 with various people. My next stop was the Gargoyles/Bad Guys panel, which apparently replaced a previously planned Spider-Man panel (which fell apart after the owners banned nearly every topic Greg could discuss).

Notable bits:
- Bad Guys began with three characters: Dingo, Matrix and Fang. To fill the role of a "hardcase" female character, they almost went with a new character, before settling on Robyn Canmore. Lastly, they figured a gargoyle would be good, so they added Yama.
- In terms of Illuminati ranking, Mace Malone was somewhere in the high 20s before he died. Xanatos has been an Illuminatus for a few years; Greg won't reveal how long Castaway was a member.
- The first six issues of Bad Guys take place in late 1996 to early 1997. They start in 1997, before flashing back to 1996.
- Matrix's potential power level would become an issue in a second series of Bad Guys. Greg actually conceived of this plotline before the first series.
- Yama wants to redeem himself, but the Bad Guys' bosses are still blackmailing him into service, which he resents.
- Eventually, the Bad Guys may meet Jackal and Hyena, but not in the first series.
- Vinnie will appear in Bad Guys.
- Although Greg would love to do more than one comic a month, he can't financially justify it.
- They briefly considered doing a "Gargoyles Classics" title that would adapt television stories into comic form, but ultimately rejected it.
- Although Gargoyles is SLG's most successful title (before you factor in the expense of the license), it's "not safe" or stable. The delay between the early issues, he said, "killed us." The title will probably run through issue #12, but there will probably be a financial re-evaluation at that time. The license is strictly limited to comics (no T-shirts or such).
- Disney owns everything created for the Gargoyles comic.
- Someone proposed making a Gargoyles tabletop role-playing game, but Greg thinks it'd require a major developer to work.
- As with the Blue Mug, there are a few bits I can't reveal, as they would spoil issue #5.

Next, after a failed attempt to play the Lethal Weapon pinball game, I played some air hockey against King Cobra (who kicked my butt). Went back to the art show, saw some new art (including Transformers stuff mentioned to me by A Fan), and bid on a few silent auctions (none of which I ultimate won). I also registered for G2K8, and got a few more comics, then headed back to my room for a bit.

The banquet was nice- the food was good, the iced tea perhaps a little too sweet. My table included (if I recall correctly) Mandi, Ethan Gilchrist, Brant Wells, and a few others. Then, we had the Q&A.

Notable bits:
- One fan asked a lot of Puck questions.
- Puck will not appear in the first 12 issues of the comic.
- In "City of Stone," the humans were real stone, not organic stone like the gargoyles.
- Greg may have bet he can get Demona to say "Jalepena."
- The Weird Sisters vary in which sister is ascendant at which time.
- What Titania said calmed Fox down. (No, Greg didn't say exactly what.)
- The "four tricksters" story would involve a competition over which would be Alex's tutor. Puck considers all of them rivals, and some of them friends. There are more than four tricksters.
- Favorite colors: Night sky blue for Greg, blue or red (it alternates back and forth) for Thom.
- Greg really wished that scene with Vinnie from "Hunter's Moon" could have stayed in.
- Which character would you remove from the show, if you absolutely had to? Greg would remove Lois. Thom would remove Owen, just to annoy people.

It was also revealed that Thom and seven fans got Phoenix Gate tattoos prior to the banquet. (From what I hear, Greg wasn't sure what to make of it...) As the group dispersed, I asked Norcumi and Quindar what the backstory was to the whole "Gargles" thing. I had assumed one or both of them were dentists or somesuch, but actually, they were just capitalizing on a common misspelling... also, I learned they actually have a gargles-fans.org!

Heading downstairs, I was witness to an awesome series of air hockey games involving (among others) King Cobra, Greg, Thom, and Flanker, with Flanker narrowly winning the impromptu "tournament." (Greg is really good at that game...) King Cobra asked if I wanted to play, but, now understanding why I lost so badly earlier, I declined. (No masochist, me.) Then, it was time for the masquerade. Halloweenking had an amazing gargoyle costume, and there were great showings from the other contestants as well... after that, I honestly didn't do much. (My wallflower tendencies kicked in.) The party broke into two areas, one with dancing and such, and one with quieter events. In the latter, I saw some interesting card games running, and in the former, I saw some dance numbers. Managed to chat a little with Harvester of Eyes, Greg B. and others... but ultimately, I just opted to leave. As the con suite was closed, I merely headed back to my room and turned in for the evening.

Oh, there was one brief interruption before I went to sleep - someone came by looking for the fellow selling the comic books, to tell him of the roof leakage. (They were checking every room on the second floor, it seems. Unfortunately, I couldn't help them find him...

JEB writes...

Gathering Journal - Saturday, June 23, 2007

Repeating my pattern from yesterday, I lazed about before heading out to the dealer's room. This time, I ran into Greg B., then bought a substantial stack of inexpensive comics (thus patching some holes in my collection). After hauling them back to my room, I headed on down to the Con Suite, and sat through the tail end of "Eye of the Beholder" and all of "Vows" before going back upstairs to get a replacement for my badge (it had suffered some water damage). Back to the con suite again, where I sat through 98% of "City of Stone", chatted with Mandi, then worked on the Gargoyles "Krossword" for a long while before going upstairs to see the radio play.

The radio play itself was excellent - based on "Clan-Building" Parts 3-5 (which, yes, includes the as-yet-unreleased July issue). Good performances all around. The best thing is, the play will be posted on YouTube in August... I'm not allowed to describe the plot of the July issue, but suffice to say it's got some great moments in it.

After the play, I wound up hanging out with Mandi, Kathy, Emambu, Stephanie, Lynati and Mara in Mandi and Kathy's room, where we had pizza. I didn't really find any good ways into the conversation (not their fault), so after they headed to MGT3K, I opted to go back to my room for a little while and have a little snack. I headed back upstairs for the Blue Mug, arriving just after MGT3K finished.

Notable bits from the Blue Mug:
- Greg won't reveal if Brooklyn is a virgin when he meets Katana; if Delilah is sterile; if Lexington will meet his future mate before Brooklyn TimeDances; or if Coldstone is present in 2198.
- Gargoyle males are born circumcised.
- Hudson apparently wears pants instead of a loincloth because he feels he needs more dignity.
- Thailog designed Delilah to be a proper companion, not a mere sex slave - more than a minion, but less than an equal. Her diction has always been better than that of her fellow clones.
- Greg may consider doing a Blue short story, but he makes no promises. He suggested an auction for it may be in order, if done...
- Greg once contacted Phil Foglio on the possibility of a XXXenophile-type work featuring gargoyle-like characters. Although Foglio was intrigued, he was too busy, not to mention getting away from that sort of material after joining a local school board...
- Gargoyles and humans besides Goliath and Elisa have fallen in love, but it's extremely rare. It's so rare there isn't even a cultural taboo against it. Sometime between c. 3000 BC and 2199, there is only one other human-gargoyle relationship - and no, Greg isn't telling.
- Now that Puck is stuck as Owen for the long haul, we may see some changes in Owen's behavior.
- When Puck becomes Owen, there is a psychological transformation as well as a physical one. However, this does not mean Puck and Owen exist as distinct personalities in one form- when he's Puck, he's just Puck, and when he's Owen, he's just Owen.
- One issue of the comic is about equal to one act from a TV episode. Greg admits he's become used to writing for television rather than comics, but he hopes to break that pattern with Bad Guys.
- Greg chose not to have a fictional president, because - outside of the obvious fantasy elements - he likes to make the Gargoyles universe as close to reality as possible.
- It's important that sales of the regular comic not lag due to the pending release of a collected edition. If the regular comic doesn't sell, there might not be collected editions to buy... Greg also hopes to have some bonus material in the trade paperback (including a foreword by Wendy Pini), and possibly also a trade paperback of Bad Guys.
- A very complicated spell could enable the reattachment of a severed limb during stone sleep (assuming the gargoyle didn't die from the shock of the damage).
- The TimeDancer miniseries will be a "fragment" from his 40-year trip.
- Thom thinks Lex's pick of the litter would be Coldstone. He also never saw Lex as a monster, but just a 17-year-old guy.
- At this point in the comic, Lex is not sure of his sexuality.
- Coldstone does not age, but he is subject to normal wear and tear.
- Greg may eventually cover Molly/Banshee again.
- There were occasional squatters at Castle Wyvern between 994 and 1994, but no one stayed, as it was too creepy (not to mention the discouraging presence of Hakon and the Captain's ghosts).
- Judge Roebling's dialogue in the comic is indeed inspired by Foghorn Leghorn.
- In terms of Trio literacy - Lexington knew how to read in the 990s; Brooklyn knew how to read a little in the 990s, and improved under Lex's tutelage in the present day; Broadway chose not to learn until after "Lighthouse." When they were naming themselves, Lex probably read street signs for them, or they overheard the names.
- When Hunchback of Notre Dame was being developed, they stopped by the Gargoyles production area to compare their gargoyles with their gargoyles. They were pleased they bore no similarity to one another.
- Favorite reading material: Greg regularly reads the Los Angeles Times, as well as detective fiction; Thom is a "complete freak" for true crime books (and he also likes self-help books).
- When "Dominique Destine" was forming a relationship with "Lennox MacDuff," she presented herself as a good Catholic French girl.
- Macbeth probably spent years drunk, but he's not so suicidal anymore. By 2198, he is a hermit.
- Fox could be trained to use her mystical powers, but it'd be much more difficult for her than it is for Alex.
- Greg's career: Greg considers himself a good boss, but a bad employee. He's starting to run into executives who are Gargoyles fans.
- Greg told a rather lengthy tale involving why Nana Visitor was not the voice of Fox, and why Jonathan Frakes was briefly not the voice of Xanatos. Suffice to say it involved a lot of errors and office politics... Frakes never let Greg forget that he was temporarily fired, and humorously brought it up whenever possible.
- The ten-year gap between the end of the animated series and the beginning of the comic allowed Greg a lot of time to refine his ideas.
- Despite Atlantis: The Lost Empire not being part of the Gargoyles universe (due to various contradictions), the Praying Gargoyle still has an Atlantean crystal at its core. Greg would like to use the Team Atlantis characters in an adaptation of the story in comic form, but if he can't, he'll use analogues.
- There were also some bits related to comic issue #5, but I can't speak of them...

With no more questions, Blue or otherwise, the session was ended. I hung around a little, but quickly realized there was little point. So I went back to my room and slept.

JEB writes...

Gathering Journal - Thursday, June 21, 2007

Transit day. Greg B. (having stayed at my apartment overnight) got me up a bit after 8. (I'd already been awake, but I'd been trying really hard to avoid getting up before my alarm.) In about an hour, we were on our way, with me driving the first five hours, and Greg the second four. Greg came prepared with various CDs, including America: The Book, The Sopranos soundtrack, and the Kill Bill Vol. 1 soundtrack. There were a few minor navigation problems on the way down, but overall, it was a rather tranquil trip. (And may I note that Greg has an impressively gas-efficient car? I envy it.)

After 6:30, we got to the Grand Resort Hotel; after checking in, we parted ways for a time while we settled into our respective rooms. I did a bit of exploring, and got some supplies from Walgreens, before re-contacting him about possible dinner plans. Arriving at his room, he showed me the front-page below-the-fold story from the local paper on the con, with its surprisingly positive view; then we ordered some pizza.

About that time, a group strolled by which included Hudson, Eric "Gorebash", Chloe, Karl, and (I believe) Dancer, who stuck around for a good while in varying recombinations of discussion. Greg wound up sharing about all of his pizza with the lot; I left mine out for public consumption, but no one moved on it (probably 'cause I didn't make it obvious). Emambu and his girlfriend, Stephanie, walked by as well, but they were already on their way to somewhere else. The group moved to Hudson's room, where we mostly watched his roommate play Resident Evil 4 for a bit on the Wii. Having seen the game through before, I chose not to stick around, made a supplemental Walgreens trip, then headed back to my room for the night.

Asatira writes...

Wednesday - Thursday
For all intents, the Gathering started on Wednesday, when my mom and I began the first half of the drive up to Tennessee. We thought it best to split the six hour drive into two parts, and ovenight somewhere halfway up. Thankfully, the drive was uneventful and we arrived at the hotel Thursday afternoon without any problems. Upon check-in, I found out that the hotel was pratically booked solid, with only a handful of rooms left. Turns out that the Gathering was one of five or six other groups staying or using the hotel that weekend. Whoa.

Friday
This was the first official day of the Gathering, and I split from mom that morning so she could do what she wanted while I was occupied with the events. I got my badge and got a one-day pass for my mom to use that night at the opening ceremonies. I looked at the available dealers and the art that was up so far in Artists' Alley (I got a Metal Man comic from the comics dealer there, a plus for me). The first panel I went to was the basic arts panel, to which Karine eventually managed to make. It was fun, a review in part for me, but still great to attend. The next panel I attended was Grimorum-making, taught by the wonderful Jenn-Bob, who also modeled for the life-drawing session we had afterwards. Finally came the opening ceremonies, and I was rather nervous about this particular event. I was one of the volunteers who provided animatics for the reel for "The Last", for which I dragged my mom to see. I listened and cheered through Greg's remarks and news, enjoying the promo reels and the little bonuses that have happened over the last year. It was with a lot of butterflies that I watched "The Last" animatic, but once I saw my part up on the TV, I was relieved. It had turned out rather well, and I was glad to have added my part to it. Unfortunately, my mom couldn't stay through the whole ceremonies and had to miss it. Ah, well. I stayed for the music video contest (sorry, guys, not one of the ones who did the mini-golf). And that was it for me that night.

Saturday
Went to the life-drawing panel first thing in the morning, which provided a lot of nice gestures and drawings. Next was Karine's Fan to Pro panel. Samuel liked to squirm during it. He's so cute! Back to the panel: Karine gave a lot of information about her work in the past, how things went in the industry, and what she was enjoying about working on issue 5 of Gargoyles and so far for Bad Guys. After that, I hung out for a while in Artists' Alley and got to talk with Mara while she drew, then caught the last part of the Worldbuilding panel. Mom and I went to have a late lunch / early dinner before the radio play.

Okay, for me, and I'm sure a lot of others, the radio play this year was a highlight. For one, it's possibly the largest one so far, with the cast -- even with a few doubling roles -- that was about equal to the audience. Second, it was a performance of issues three to five, and we had to promise to keep our mouths shut about what gets revealed until the final issue comes out. Needless to say, it rocked. So much gets answered in issue five, and so much more. Let's me say this much: there were a lot of laughs, a lot of "Ooohhs" and "Ahhs" and at least one "Squeee!". When it comes out, I am so buying it.

After that, I checked out the MGT3K for the first time, which was fun, though I don't think I contributed much. Lastly for the night was the Blue Mug. It was rather tame this time around, which isn't to say we didn't have our dirty moments. Greg got to show off his custom shirt. Thom pulled his pants down to show his tattoo, which was cool. At least two animated gifs were shown to them, and Mara's own oh so wrong but oh so funny pic got passed around, which prompted another revelation that drew a collective "Ooohh."

Sunday
I opted to attend the costuming panel, which became an open discussion and tip trading. I followed this up with the Garg physiology and culture panel. Because it was mentioned in the weeks prior to the Gathering, I decided to ask the question whether Katherine's excuse towards Constantine had any validity. We came to the consensus that yeah, the eggs needed to be turned, and various reasons why. Taxonomy was discussed, genetics, as was the interesting, to me anyway, topic of the "castle" as a concept of home and duty to Gargoyles, and to Goliath specifically. After that came the Bad Guys panel, that was part discussion of the upcoming comic and part brainstorming session about what we as fans can do to help get more notice for the comics, DVDs, and next year's con. All very cool ideas, and a few I plan to follow up as well as I can. We also got to see the posters for the upcoming trade of issues 1-6 and for Bad Guys #1. I disappeared for while to eat until the Masquerade, as well as watch the really strong summer storm that went through that afternoon. It was fun to see all the costumes, and at least one dance perfomance (whoever you are, I'm sorry I don't remember your name). Prizes were handed out, and then we partied. I enjoyed dancing and talking with everyone. Especially the performances to songs from Rent and Rocky Horror.

Monday
Monday was a short day. I attended the re-scheduled marker panel while listening to the live auction in the next room. I came over to say goodbye to Karine and Jen. After that, I went to help my mom with her stuff, and we were off.

Overall, it was a rather fun con. I signed up for next year's in Chicago, and plan to get to Vashkoda a better version of the animatic I contributed, as well as participate in the art show. Hope everyone else had fun, and I hope to see you guys next year.

Kessalia writes...

OK, I'm told this is where con reports go, so here goes... Gathering 2007 only, not the camping trip that preceded it.

So Thursday we woke up in North Carolina at a very nice little motel about 5 miles west of Cherokee. We took our time heading out, and just had breakfast out of what we had with us, which was plenty. We actually spent the first part of the day in the park, looking for a couple waterfalls we had managed to miss the first time through. Finally sighed and headed back to the craziness that is Pigeon Forge, and since we'd spotted the hotel on the way down had no trouble finding it. Shan checked us in, we hauled our stuff up to the room they gave us, and whoops... It was very definitely a smoking room, and reeked accordingly. Since Shan had specifically requested a NON smoking room, we called the desk and got put on hold. For way too long a time. Finally we got fed up and just walked back down to the desk, where the putz on the counter just rolled out the old "Oh no, that IS a non smoking room (despite the lack of sign, odor, and ASHTRAYS on the tables) we have no room to move you to, sorry, go spray air freshener." As he was finishing up his little memorized rote a manager comes up behind him, hands him a paper, and says "This is where we're moving them to" and boy did the putz clam up fast. Twit. Guess SOMEone had been working while we'd been on hold after all. Ah well, we had much much less room trouble than the rest of the clan, so we can't complain too much.
Anyway, got up to the room, which was RIGHT across from the con area, which would have been more marvy if we didn't have to wait for and take the elevator that whole 10 feet... *L*
Settled in, cranked the AC up high, and went back to the desk to get directions to the airport, since we were planning to go pick Rob and Maui up at about 11 pm. Nice clerk gave us a map and directions, and we walked across the street for dinner. Finally managed to get a hold of the rest of the clan, who were riding in from Memphis with Trimm - They were running late due to flight delays of course, so we re-confirmed I'd go get the other bunch that night, no problems. I called Rob to make sure everything was still OK with his flight just after the buggers cancelled it for a 10 minute thunderstorm. As far as we knew Maui was still on time, but we had no idea when Rob was gonna get in now. Finally he gets rescheduled, to the NEXT DAY. So poor Wobby spent a crappy night at the airport, but at least it meant Shan and I could BOTH go get Maui (we were gonna leave Shan behind before because of lack of space - remember all my camping stuff was taking up the entire trunk. :P ) That worked really well, because there was construction blocking all the routes we knew of to get BACK to the motel from the airport - so we got brave and after picking Mau up without a hitch, we grabbed the atlas and map the hotel gave us and fumbled our way back to PF in the dark. Made it, though,and got to the hotel not that far behind the rest of the clan, who'd gotten stuck in the construction traffic we'd detoured around. They'd reserved a suite, but I guess there were none left, so they got thrown across the freaking street to a even more ghetto hotel owned by the same people. Sure, it was technically a suite, and I admit I never saw it, but I heard stories. And 'overcharged' doesn't start to cut it, I also heard. Still, I'll let them blog that little mess... We got back, Mau went over to visit them for a few minutes, then came back and we all slept.

Next morning, Friday! I woke up and everyone else was still asleep (or half awake and just not getting up yet, who knows) but it was rapidly approaching 9 am and I finally said screw it and got up and wandered a bit, looking for people I knew. Walked next door to the BP station and got breakfast, then ran into con staffers on the way upstairs. Asked if they needed help and got told no, not really, but I went and butted into the room anyway because I saw JG in there setting up the art area. Said hi to her, and volunteered to help with art panels, and that time got a 'yes please!' *L* Helps when people can recognize you without a nametag. :P Finally the rest of my room got up and moving and wandered over, and promptly got put to work, because that's what Arcadia does... we get drafted easy. :P I grabbed my badge in there somewhere, but we hung out until all the art we had was hung and labeled, and by that time the rest of the clan had arrived and hugs were exchanged. About noon Shan and I headed back up to the airport to get Rob, and we took a different route that was more scenic, had less construction, but was much longer. Still got there just at the right time, though, and grabbed Wobby without much trouble. Grabbed lunch on the way back, and zoomed back to PF... I was still about 15 minutes late getting to the 3pm lifedrawing session though. Life drawing was fun, I always like it because the con is the only place I can do it in anything like a formal setting. They were also cool about taking pics, so I snagged photos of some of the more complex poses, too. ^_^ The clan waited patiently while I finished that up, then those who wanted to went to opening ceremonies, which Shan and I skipped in favor of being lazy in the hotel room and eating our leftovers from lunch. After the ceremonies finally wound up, we all met up downstairs, picking up a few adoptees of course in the process, and went to dinner (Shan and I just got desserts) and then walked a couple blocks to a laser tag place. I'd never done it before, but it was fun. I assume part of the fun was the group, though. We got the whole session to ourselves, which rocked, too. I came in next to dead last for points, go me! ;P At that point it was getting late, so it was back to the hotels and bed -eventually. *L*

Saturday!! We all slept too late but I hauled my butt out of bed for the 10 am lifedrawing. They were really the only con things I did, so I'm glad I did that much, at least. *L* The poor across the street people finally managed to get a room in the con hotel, another suite, which was much nicer but still too expensive in my opinion. *L* Hung out there a bit and goofed off a lot, (pic is DE, Arno, and Maui) of course. There was not much going on that we really needed to go until the MGT3K at 8, so some of us went swimming and Mau and DE wandered off shopping or something, I think. We ended up driving to TGIFridays for dinner that night, which was nice - I usually don't get to see much of the people who stay in the other clan room, so getting to hang with Trimm, Beedoo! and Arno for the evening was awesome. ^_^ I didn't do the radio play as usual (I still have -never- sat through one of those. Some year, I guess) but a lot of the clan wanted to go to the MGT3K, and the rest of us went swimming again. Well, Rob came and played with his camera and let us pick on him, and DE couldn't swim because of her bum knee, but the rest of us swam. Well, ok, all 5 of us. But still. After that there was much confusion and trying to find Arno and the others, which was finally given up on and sleep happened. Eventually. :P

SUNDAY! I... have no idea what happened Sunday? Oh! Wait, yeah, we went to breakfast at the pancake place next door, and then split up again. DE had to leave to head back to work Monday, most of the clan went for mini golf and Shan and I went up to the outlet mall because I was looking for things for my nephew's birthday. I didn't get a darn thing for my nephew and ended up only getting some hand soap for myself. But it's nice soap, darnit. ;P Met up with the rest of the group and did a lap of go-cart racing, before we headed back to the hotel and picked up the cars and went to Golden Corral for our non-banquet clan dinner. *L* Got back and headed to the Masquerade! Most of my pics are semi-random Masquerade pics, so I'm not gonna detail them here again, sorry. pic folder is here again if you missed it the first time.
Hung out after wards, got in the conga line, and then went over to take the traditional clan pic. Two weird things happened, first people kept jumping into the pic with us who we barely or didn't know at all, and second, people we didn't or barely knew kept taking our pictures once we finally got posed. It was like we were famous or something? *L* But I was the bitch and kicked everyone else out (except for the guy with the kick ass costume, I wasn't complaining about him) and got the pic - Arcadia Clan Gathering Pic 2007! and my thanks to whoever shot the pic for me. It's a decent photo of everyone except me. *L* Back row is Arno, Trimm, me, Robert, and the gargoyle, Delphine is in the middle, then Beedoo!, Maui, and JG are in the front. DE had already left. After that we noticed the room we were in had handy tables, so we got into a weird card game Beed had brought until JG came back in and told us about the problems with water leaking in the dealers/art room. So the clan pitched in and went to help take down the art show in a hurry, and we were just finishing that up along with the staff when the whole CON showed up and started helping us move the dealers' stuff to improvised high ground. I was very impressed with how we all worked together, and seeing who ended up in charge and who was actually getting obeyed and who was doing what was interesting. *L* Still, that little exercise seemed to pretty much kill the dance ( it's funny, the one time I've been there that we were isolated enough that we could have stayed more than a few minutes, and everyone left - maybe it's habit at this point? ;P ) so we went back to our card games. I finally left when I noticed that the noise in the room was making me literally cringe every time someone said something, and the game was such that everyone was yelling and being loud, that was part of the fun - but I couldn't take it anymore and had to beg off and head to bed before my head exploded. o.O Since I knew we were heading out first thing in the morning, I did manage to get re-packed most of the way, and then went back to donate some of the food we had left from camping but didn't want to haul home over to the card players... But finally I got a shower and some sleep and the headache went away.

MONDAY! Basically just got up, found the clan, and said goodbyes. We had set ourselves a strict goal of 10 am departure, based on how long a drive we had, and we made it almost on the nose. It was the LONGEST damn drive through Kentucky ever, I swear it was all downhill once we got to Ohio, but still it seemed like such a damn long drive. *L* But we had the Arcadia CD to keep us company and we finally got home about 7:30. After which we promptly crashed, since Delfy had to be at work way too freaking early the next morning.

THE END! Yes, I'm planning on going to Chicago, though I didn't have the money to pre-reg yet.

Harvester of Eyes writes...

Gathering Journal, Part Three

Sunday, 6/24/2007

Slept in until ten, then woke up and went downstairs for biscuits and gravy. After breakfast, I hit an ATM, and then my brother and I decided to sit in on the Gargoyles physiology/culture discussion. Greg was very animated during this one, especially towards the end when talking about how a gargoyle might define "the castle". The main thing I took away was that gargoyles and humans have one very key thing in common: the men are idiots, and the women are crazy.

After that, there was a panel on Gargoyles/Bad Guys. Right before it started, I went down to the second floor, found a vending machine that didn't hate me, and got my Mike-and-Ikes at long last! Vengeance is mine (or at least artificial fruit flavors were mine)! The comic panel turned more into a motivational speech on spreading the word. But in all fairness, Greg had said that it was because the panel had been thrown together at the last minute, and he was unable to answer too many questions about the story (for which I couldn't blame him).

I went upstairs after that, and perused some of the items up for silent auction. I had already bid on some art, otherwise I would have put some bids in on a few other things. I didn't even know Tiger made an LCD game for Gargoyles. I tried to get some soda from the third floor vending machines after that, but they refused to give me any love. So I gave up, and went back to the room to shower and shave. I still had time to kill after cleaning up for dinner. I chatted with my brother for a bit (he went to Gatlinburg during the comic panel, and he described it as a Swedish town in the middle of nowhere). Earlier, I had offered to front him some money to go on the waiting list for the Banquet, but he kept saying no.

Went down to the second floor after that, and finally scored some Coke from THAT soda machine. They must have grouped all the working machines on the second floor. I also had a nice chat with Jonathon and Kristen (whom I'd met Friday night), and also with Susan Leonard. My memory was hazy on just what we talked about, but hunger usually puts gaps in my memory.

The Banquet was a lot of fun, though I was confused as to why the chicken appeared to be served over rice with some mysterious yellow gravy. I thought the menu said it would be Southern Fried. Ah, well, it was still good. The potatoes and gravy were awesome. The Q and A afterwards was also very enjoyable (if Greg was annoyed with me asking if he took the Mrs. Smith's apple pie out of the box before eating it, he didn't show it). Overall, it was a lot of fun. If my brother actually comes with me again next year, I'm fronting him the money for the Banquet. He went to KFC.

A wicked storm kicked up after the Q and A let out. My brother and I smoked pipes on the balcony, until the wind picked up and started blowing the rain into our faces. When that happened, we decided to abort. I bumped into Brooklyn X and a few other people not far from my room, and got some pictures of a table upside-down in the swimming pool. Shortly after that, my brother and went to grab seats at the Masquerade.

The Masquerade was wild. I don't know if my brother enjoyed himself, but I did. Sadly, I was sitting under the fluorescents, so I didn't get too many good pictures. I got some great ones after the judging, though. My brother went back to the hotel room shortly after the awards were given out, and I tried to get him to come hang out with us. He came over for about five minutes, and then I lost track of him. I think he went back to the room to drink some more and pray for my soul. It's funny. I'm usually the antisocial one, and this time he was the one drinking in the hotel room. ( ;

Lots of general insanity after that. Managed to have some better, lengthier chats with Greg X, Kelly, and JEB. Kelly and I discussed the possibility of doing something Quarrymen-related at next year's Masquerade, an idea that took better shape as the night progressed. Watched some kareoke, and wound up doing some of it myself with a few other males in the room (that was fun. Haven't belted out a good rendition of "A--hole" in years), but not too long after that, there was a bit of a buzzkill from the rain, which caused a leak in the Dealer's Room. From what I heard later, everything was okay, but a bunch of people needed to go buy tarps because the rain picked up again.

Kelly, Leo and I did our own search for the comic book dealer, but we wound up back in Leo and Kelly's room, drinking coffee and bitching about the hotel. Despite all my belly-aching, I still liked the hotel. It had personality. I went upstairs after that, and hung out a bit more. Had another chat with a girl named Tiffany about tattoos. All this talk has gotten me thinking about getting one at the next Gathering. I eventually wound up in the hotel lobby with Thom Adcox and a group of other people (names are, again, sadly a blur) watching dirty videos on youtube, as well as a short film someone made based upon an internet comic. I went back up to my room about a quarter after midnight, watched "Venture Brothers" with my brother, and then slept.

6/25/2007

Woke up, and started to get breakfast. Once again, the line in the lobby was too long. And honestly, my brother and I were tired of biscuits and gravy. So we went to McDonald's and grabbed coffee. We went back to the hotel after getting coffee, and I bumped into Mandy and BrooklynX as they were checking out. Said goodbye to them (BX and I wound up chatting a few times over the weekend when he was pulling guard duty for Radio Play auditions and rehearsals). After that, we went upstairs to where Greg, Thom, and Karine were signing things. Got them to sign a copy of Gargoyles #3 for someone whose wedding I went to over a year ago, and I still hadn't gotten him a gift. Thanks, guys! He's a massive fan of Gargoyles, so he'll appreciate it a lot! Hopefully, it won't take as long for me to mail it out to him, and I'll be sure to mention Chicago in the letter.

Said goodbye to Greg X and JEB, then stopped upstairs to the Dealer's Room to pick up some art. Bought a very nice Demona piece from Revel. Said some more goodbyes after that, and then my brother and I hit the road. I decided to forego stopping at a fireworks outlet, since we got a late start and my brother had a longer drive than I did.

Made the trip in seven hours, and saw more roadkill on the way home. The final roadkill count was:

Bird - 1
Deer - 3
Fox - 1
Opossum - 2
Raccoon - 7
Unknown - 8

Unpacked the car and started to upload the Gathering pics I took so my brother could copy them onto a portable drive. Only problem was it was taking too long. So he told me to just give him a CD next time we saw each other, and he started off again. I unpacked my stuff, had a beer and some leftover enchiladas, and vegged out until I got sleepy.

Overall, it was a blast. Hope to do it again in 2008.

Harvester of Eyes writes...

Gathering Journal, Part Two

Friday, 6/22/2007

I slept longer than I had in a while, but I was on vacation. Wasn't very hungry when I woke up. Had a lot of nervous energy, which usually deprives me of my appetite. Went down to the lobby with my brother, drank some coffee, ate some biscuits and gravy (which were surprisingly good). Tacky as everything was, the people of the town were very friendly. After breakfast, we attempted to find our way upstairs to claim our badges. We wound up going outside to the Convention Center by mistake, then back inside, then down a few dead-ends until we found the stairwell we wanted. Lots of dead-ends in this hotel. It had so much character, I'm amazed that the fire warden hadn't condemned it yet.

After we got our stuff from the Dealer's Room, my brother and I split up. I ran across the street to Walgreens for more supplies, and then sat in on the Fanfic 101 group discussion. Stopped back in the hotel room afterward for a cold slice of leftover bacon pizza. I initially was not going to go to Thom Adcox's voice-acting panel, but my brother was going, so I went with him. I'm glad I changed my mind. Thom is a very funny guy and had some very amusing stories to tell about his experiences in the business. I did manage to take away the sense that voice-acting is tough (the business aspect of it). Plus, he also mentioned that the Gargoyles voice cast looked upon the Goliath Chronicles as a paycheck, which made me laugh.

Had time to kill before Radio Play auditions, so my brother and I went for a drive to see what was in the direction of Gatlinburg. It's weird, because you eventually reach a point where the tackiness of Pigeon Forge just seems to stop abruptly, and you're in the middle of the woods again. We followed that road for a bit, and then turned around, and got back to the hotel with time to spare.

Never made it to auditions, though, because I ran into Kelly (Sadistic Cow) up in the dealer's room. I wound up following her back to her room, where she introduced me to Leo, DTaina, and Doppelganger. For some reason, they were watching "Lois and Clark" on DVD (and I joined Leo in annoying Taina with Superman jokes. Can I make a good first impression or what?).

Fortunately, the episode was just ending, so we all went down to see the ducks. They have these freaky looking ducks that swim in the river next to the picnic area behind the hotel. They're like these mutant duck-turkey things. I got some pictures of them. We chatted for a bit, fed some Chex Mix to the mutant ducks, and then went inside to avoid getting sunburned. I lost track of my companions on the stairway between the first and third floors, mainly because I started chatting with Carter (Alex Garg) and Seth (IRC Goliath) about movies and the tackiness of Pigeon Forge. After that, I ran into Matt on the way back to my hotel room. I told him that I wasn't going to enter the mini-golf raffle, because miniature golf infuriates me, and I wanted to make a good first impression.

Opening Ceremonies were shortly after that, and they were a lot of fun. Most of us wound up moving onto the floor shortly after we got there, so everyone could see the TV, but I didn't care. There was also some trouble with the video, but again, everyone was in good spirits about it. I'd never seen the "Bad Guys" demo reel before. It was more hardcore than I'd been expecting. I also enjoyed watching the "Atlantis" episode. The unfinished scenes were actually very entertaining, even though the finished scenes looked great. Greg Weisman broke the podium and took it in great stride. And apparently, going only 20 minutes over is good for him (I spoke to someone later who advised me that his average is 40 minutes over).

My brother and I went to Wendy's after that (Spicy Chicken sandwich, the only thing I ever get from them), and wound up missing the first few music videos. But that was okay. I'd already seen a few of them on youtube. I hung out in the Atrium after that, which was fun. I have to remember to bring my chess set to Chicago next year. I love to play, but no one in my family will play with me anymore. Chatted with the comic book dealer, who apparently has been in his chosen field since 1983. Told me about what a few of his oldest comics were. I went downstairs after that to see what Cow, Taina, and Leo were up to. Hung out with them, Doppleganger, and Carter for a bit. Watched the last hour of "Army of Darkness," and wound up reciting most of it (hopefully, I wasn't annoying anyone).

Went back upstairs after the movie to see what was happening in 2A. Someone (I think it was Mara) did an amazing sketch of Delilah using only Crayola markers. I chatted with JEB for a bit about gaming while I watched. Lost track of the picture after she finished (there was talk of slipping it under Greg Weisman's door. I spoke to her the next day, and she didn't know what happened to it, either).

After that, Hudson started ranting. It was all highly offensive humor, which is a guilty pleasure of mine. I managed to get my brother out of the hotel room for some of it. Pity we never got around to the Jalapena contest (that sounded fun), but Hudson's rant more than made up for it. Got tired around midnight, so when Hudson stopped to use the restroom, my brother and I went back to our room for rest.

Saturday, 6/23/2007

Overslept, which means I missed Radio Play auditions (after I swore I'd set my alarm for them). My brother and I went down to the lobby, and but the line for breakfast was too long. So we decided to go elsewhere. We ran into a Fan as we were leaving, so he asked if he could tag along.

Despite what Thom said during his voice panel the day before, we did wind up eating at the Red Rooster. I didn't get the pancakes, though. Just had cornflakes and coffee, the breakfast of champions. A Fan and my brother did a lot of the talking (my brother's pursuing a master's in History, so he loves to hear people talk about themselves). We split up after that. I bought some provisions from Walgreen's, as well as something for my stomach, since I felt a little queasy. Bought the least drowsy thing I could find. By early afternoon, I felt like my cynical old self again.

Perused some art up in the Dealer's Room after dropping the stuff off back in the hotel room. Saw some things that caught my eye, but didn't bid just yet. Figured I'd stew on it while I sat in on Karine's panel. However, I did buy a T-Shirt for Gathering 2008 in Chicago. I'll be doing my best to make it there. Showed up for Karine's panel early, so I chatted for a bit with Mandy and someone whose name I can't remember (I'm sorry. I've always been better with faces than I have names. Takes me a few tries to remember someone's name). Karine's panel was very entertaining. I was very impressed with her energy. People were asking some very good questions, and she sat and patiently answered them all while juggling her infant son. The way people have talked about it, I'm very much looking forward to seeing Issue #5 of the comic now (the preview pages looked great). Went back to the Dealer's Room after that, and placed a bid on some artwork that caught my eye.

Didn't get a chance to sign up for one of the Mug-a-Guests (I meant to yesterday, but got sidetracked), so I had time to kill before the Radio Play. My brother and I went down the road to a country record store. Got some postcards, and came very close to buying a redneck cookbook. I do like hushpuppies. After that, we drove back to the hotel, and went up to the Dealer's Room. We hung out, chatted with some people, and I wound up flipping through some... interesting... comics that Kelly bought.

Took a nap before the Radio Play, got up ten minutes before it started, shotgunned half a lukewarm Pepsi, and then my brother and I took the long way around to 2A. The cast for the Radio Play was great. It was not what I expected: Issues 3, 4 and 5 of the comic. To anyone who wasn't there, all I'll say is: buy Issue #5 when it comes out. If your comic store doesn't carry it, get them to order it through any means necessary. It is well worth it.

I was expecting the play to go on a bit longer. So I had a chunk of time to kill. I smoked a pipe by the river, and had a little chat with Cow and Leo. Then went back to the room for dinner, which my brother and I had purchased earlier. We were tired of eating fast food, so we scarfed some Oscar Mayer Lunchables (not to mention some fresh blackberries, which tasted great) and watched Jesus Talk Live for about five minutes. Less said about that, the better.

After we ate, I went to MGT3K. I ran sat next to Matt, and had a lot of fun. We all did our best to tear into "Lighthouse in the Sea of Time," "Outfoxed," and "The Price." Oh, and Greg, even though you weren't there, thanks for letting us roast your intros. ( ;

We had time to kill after the main event, so Jade Griffin put "The Mirror" on for us to watch (and rip apart). Pity they didn't have the script for that one. I probably cracked my best jokes during it.

Blue Mug-A-Guest was after that. I jogged downstairs to try and grab some sugar, but the vending machine ate two of my dollars and gave no love. I had my eye on those Mike-and-Ikes, too. Ah, well. I ran back upstairs, and found a seat right before it started. Man, was that wild! I think we scared my brother away with the second question. He went back to the hotel room before eleven. Thom told some interesting jokes, and I also have a vague memory of some youtube videos being passed around. By 12:30, I was falling asleep in the chair, so I went back to the room for sleep.

To be concluded...

Harvester of Eyes writes...

Gathering Journal, Part One

Thursday, 6/21/2007

My brother and I actually left on time, or at least when we intended to, which was between 9 and 10 AM. We made good time down Route 64, and drove through a lot of counties with funny names: Fluvanna, Louisa, and before that, Goochland. Sadly, after Fluvanna, the county names stopped being funny (that, or I just stopped paying attention). We passed a lot of trucks as we drove through the valley, in the right lane with their emergency blinkers on. I would have been feeling better if we hadn't seen an Audi commercial last night that had to do with car crashes. Ah, well, good thing I don't believe in omens.

We tried to play a game where we count all the roadkill we see. But wouldn't you know it? After two hours on the road, we hadn't seen a single dead animal. Saw a living deer, but that doesn't count. Well, at least it started to pick up when we got closer to the Tennessee State Line.

When we came off the exit for I-40, we followed signs for Pigeon Forge and started to get the feeling that we were crossing into another dimension. How many dinner and show services does one place need? Or helicopter-related things, for that matter. Not to mention the fact that I saw more electronic billboards in the last 20 minutes than I have for my entire life! They probably cause more accidents every year than drunk driving.

We found the hotel more easily than we thought. Checked in, and grabbed a shower. The table I sat at in the room when I was writing this journal had several amusing pamphlets, including the Black Bear Jamboree, and the Dixie Stampede Dinner Attraction. I took the pamphlets with me. The place was so much like Vegas: it's so tacky, it's a joke. But it knows it's a joke and doesn't care. I love it! I also grabbed a complementary newspaper that had an article on the Gathering with a hysterical typo in it.

My brother and I went for a walk after that. We saw a bunch of humorous stores as we took a walk down the sidewalk. We passed this one overly tacky store where a person could feed live bears, and also purchase joke novelties, NASCAR merchandise, and a variety of fried dough. We took some humorous pictures of the tackiness. On our way back to the hotel, we ran into Carl, aka Cuddly Dominion. Had an interesting chat with him about the town, and also about designing costumes. The three of us ran into Greg X outside the hotel. He recognized me by my homemade Demona shirt. Couldn't chat too long, but it was nice to finally meet him in person after talking with him online for almost two years.

My brother and I went back up to the room after that, ordered some pizza, and watched a few episodes of "The Office," which I had never seen before but enjoyed. When it started to get a little dark, we went out to the picnic tables behind the hotel and smoked pipes. Even at nine-thirty, it was still dusk out. God, I love the Solstice!

Went back to the hotel room after smoking, and it was too cold. Had a merry time trying to get the climate controls to work. It was too hot outside, too cold in the room. Went to bed not long after that.

To be continued…

Revel writes...

The Grand conclusion

June 24

Sunday was also a bit of a sleep in day, but there were many things I wanted to do later. Breakfast was with Spacie and GregB again and once again I went for the eggs and hash because it was just that good. First panel I attended was the Othercon creative positions. Without going into many details it was a lot of fun. It ranged from the interesting to the totally bizzare. We had a raunchy good time. I definitly knew I wanted to attend th eBad Guys panel, I am really stoked about its up coming release. I always liked the concept and the art is in good hands with Karine. The panel was interesting, even when it branched into tangents. This was of course about the time the rain moved in at full force. It even blew a table into the pool. Water was leaking from the floor above in front of our room but I could not tell if any got in there.
Okay, about the banquet, I was unprepared because I was not aware she had reserved one, so I was under dressed compared to some but at least it was a polo shirt. The food was very good and I had a slice of acake. The fun thing about Banquet and Masquerade are not only the costumes but how some dress fine. Greg was wearing a nice suite, aron had his pimp suit and cane, Tony Zucconi looked very sharp. and the women, just, WOW. Spacie had on this very hot red dress, Lynati, Mara, and many others looked great. I danced a little and joined in the singing of Denis Leary's "A$$hole song" The fun was abruptly halted however when many of us had to run up stairs to rearrange the art room and dealers tables to protect them from leaks in the roof including a LOT of comic books. After we were certain things should be safe we ended up in a small circle talking about work stories and religon of all things, but it was interesting, Legacy was very interesting to listen to. Not sure when I went to bed but it was about 1am, I had talked to Flanker and he was organizing a second group for the gun range and I didn;t want to miss out again.

June 25

Woke up about 8am and grabed a quick shower before breakfast. I went with the bacon belgian waffle this time, was ok, but the eggs and hash were better. I knew today was going ot be a short day so I tried to make the most of it. We met up with Flanker in the lobby, Kathy was there reading and others passed by, There would end up being 8 of us for this trip, Myself, Spacie, Lynati, Gside, and a few others whose names are currently slipping my mind.
We took two car, my Mustang and Flanker's Charger, yes yes we are such guys, but it was a fun drive. Flanker was more than happy to fly over the mountain roads of twists and turns and my pony car kept pace. It certainly cured me of wanting to go drive go carts. *geeeek*
The last time I had been to a range was at school. it was an outdoor range and they were very strict about fire control of only one shot per second. This place on the other hand, while strict in a safe way was more than happy to let you empty and entire magazine into your target as fast as you liked. It was a lot of fun and I did decent. In fact everyone did very good. At one point I nearly shot my target right off the hanging clips and the retractor was scared of me, was odd. The drive back was slower thanks to an old person in a mini van from Florida and we were short on time. We packed up, got the car loaded and said our good byes to every one we could find. I knew more rain was coming and wanted to get to the airport on time. We were flying Continental, and one of the flights to Houston was cancled, that was the one Winterwolf was on, having arrived at the airport right after he did. Lucky for us we were on a very small plane (I could not even stand up in the aisle, had to hunch) it was delayed but we made it in. Later I fould out that Winterwolf bounced around Denver and got delayed there too. Greg Weisman also got marrooned at an airport so we were fortunate, made it home safe and sound just after 10 pm local time.

I had a wonderful time it was a fun if too short weekend and was very glad I could make it, from cars to guns to golf and of course the gorgeous women of our fandom.

PS Buy the DVDs and the Comics. Doooooo it!

Come to Chicago next year, start saving now because it will be more pricy and start finding roomies. Remember, you only sleep in the room, it never hurts to bring a sleeping bag and grab the floor. (I have a small blow up matress I can bring)

Revel writes...

To begin with I had a great time, it was a small con but we had a good time. Due to time constraints I had a short con of Friday through Monday and had to miss out on a road trip, but I will give the best details I can recall.

June 22
The day began very early. Spacie had to work the night before and I, like usual, waited up for her to come home. We left for my parent's house at about 5am because I am paranoid about leaving my car at the air port and the plane left at roughly 7am. There were no delays or hold ups on the way to Nashville and I had ea muffin and an OJ in flight.
So why Nashville when the con was in Pigeon Forge bellow Knoxville you say? Mostly financial. I had originally wanted to land late thursday so as to not have to worry about missing things, but not flights left late enough, after 8 pm in Houston so I had to settle for early Friday. Knoxvill was a much smaller airport and had limited times available for more expensive plus all the flights transfered through Nashville. Since it was cheaper to rent a car and drive it I just did that. I figured since it was just the two of us I;d get a fun car and we ended up with a new Silver Ford Mustang and it was FUN! Just a 6 cylinder but she would fly.
First stop once on the road was to get food, I grabed a Mc Griddle egg and a cheese and didn;t stop for anything else. We made good time, would have even been better if I was not a bone head and too the 441 through down town Knoxville which had stop lights. It then becomes a country road with almost NO road signs and I often cursed wondering if I had missed a turn I needed. Nevertheless we made it to the hotel with no problems. Met of with Greg Bishansky who already had our key and got things stowed away. My first priority was to get my art set up and to get my con badge. I only had 4 pieces but two sold so I call that a success. Hung out talking with Emabu, Steph, eventually Alex Garg came in Gside, many others. I believe we made our way over to the Radio Play auditions, I knew I wanted to give that a try again.
Opening Ceremonies was cozy. They didn't have a projector only a large TV so most of us ditched our chairs and sat on the floor like a big kindergarden class. Once again there were many Con virgins, almost half I'd venture to say, which is shameful from a veterans stand point but still fun. I missed the musice vids, sorry, but I was voraciously hungry by that point and some how found myself in charge of a small group looking for food. Ultimately we found a fish and fry place that had an excellent Chicken fried steak, hush puppies and I took one of Greg's Gator tail bites. After we got back to the hotel we ended up in our room just chatting and hanging out, always one of my favorite things to do, Greg B, Spacie, Winterwolf and Wolf's newbie friend Legacy who was from Nashville, he was fun to talk to. We had the curtains open and Jen walked by but not before pressing her breast to the glass and giving us kisses. I houted out thankyou to her for fun : )
Bed time soon followed.

June 23
I slept in Saturday, after staying up late talking it is always good to do. There really was not much going on, I had already auditioned so it was mostly time to catch up with people I had not seen in a year, some more.
Breakfast was over at the Red Rooster, a little diner within easy walking distance that had really good food, I didn't eat in the hotel at all. Actually I'd like to take a moment to talk about the hotel. Apparently they had assured Nikki that their renovations would be done by the time con rolled around. Well, they had lied. It was not bad but the design was very odd with the way the floors worked, having to use different staircases for con and room areas. The elevators were acomplete waste of time, I could walk to the top and back down before the elevator would open for someone and from what I head they didn;t always open to a floor or between floors. Water was a problem, I mean the jacuzzi in the lobby was cool, but the water fall on the rocks was and asnine design, it splashed right on the floor ensuring a slick entry all the time in the side lobby. Then there were the leaks, lots of them.
Anyhow. Breakfast was eggs and hash with biscuits, it was THE BEST eggs and hash I had had in a long time, was good and inexpensive. Next I checked on my art bids and bought a Jayne: Let's be Bad Guys Serenity shirt, I like it : ) I believe I ended up hanging out pretty much the rest of the time on the 3rd floor talking with people as they came and went, mostly Gside and Flanker and Alex Garg about what ever comes to mind. Was esentially waiting for the Radio play cast list, which came out about 2 in the afternoon. I had done well, there were several parts I would have loved to have had but I was pleased with what I got. Spacie and I squeezed some alone time in here somewhere.
The Radio play was awesome, I can't say enough about how wonderfully talented Emambu is, playing three characters each well done. I am so jealous ; ) In addition to that, buy the Gargs comics, play catch, find a dealer, order online but get caught up and I mean NOW. You so want to have number 5 in your hands when it comes out, it will have it all.
After Radio play I had a desire to go put-put golfing and we had plenty of time before blue mug that night. A group walked over to the Papa Johns and we each pretty much got our own or shared pizza. I got a pepperoni and black olive, hot and fresh.
To be honest it was a very well designed mini golf course, lots of ups and downs and drop thoughs. This also made it very difficult and I think i got a 28+ over par or some pathetic number like that.
Blue mug, there were a few nice questions, some were even blue! And for those wondering I got Greg to agree to that some gargs are Ribbed for pleasure, it is so wonderful having guest who are as perverted as the rest of us ; )
bed time was a little after 1am.

to be concluded...

Gathering Photos HERE -------> http://members.tripod.com/revel8/id502.htm

kathy writes...

I Went to Pancake World and What Did I See?

Well, first I went to the airport and picked up Greg. And then I went to Pancake World aka Pigeon Forge where they just happened to be hosting the 11th Annual Gathering of the Gargoyles. It was good to see people I talk to but don't normally see in person. And it was good to meet some new folks too.

Open Ceremonies is not without its nostalgic charm. I missed out on all the late night stuff due to a string of crushing headaches and inexplicably having my body clock reset to somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. But I did enjoy a trip to a shooting range where I got to actually try some of the gun-related activities I normally only write and/or read about. (which was extremely educational). And I played laser tag, which was fun in its own cathartic sort of way. And of course there was lots and lots of GARGOYLES - episodes to watch, stories told, and the irrepressable Thom Adcox.

I hosted a writing seminar which was well received. And since it wouldn't actually be a Gathering without talking about writing at least a little (and more likely a lot) that was also of the good.

And there were pancakes. And rain. And a leaking roof. And a whole lot of people pulling together to make sure Kerry the Comic Book Guy's stuff didn't get ruined. Which was cool.

But then it was over. And people went home. And I drove Greg back down the mountain (getting lost slightly in Maryville, because I always do) and when I got home I packed my lunch and got ready to go back to the real world, thus ending another Gathering weekend.

Karine writes...

Hey, I was a guest this year. Yeah, listed in the con book as a Guest next to Thom and Greg. It was strange and weird and cool and fun all at the same time.

I took very few photos, and none of them during con activities. I blame it on Samuel. All his fault for having my attention!!! So you'll just have to go look at other people's photos.

Thursday
Samuel and I were dropped off at the airport by Adam and Matthieu on Thursday morning. I like the self-check-in terminals, they make things fast and easy. As I was told that Pigeon Forge was a dry county, I went to the duty free store to pick up some good mixer booze and some Sortilège (maple syrup whisky liqueur) to bring, but as they have changed the rules on bringing liquids on planes, the alcohol had to be put in luggage that would be checked. And since I'd packed very tight, there was no room for bottles, and thus I could not buy anything. (poo)

Sam was very well behaved on the plane. Once arrived in Chicago, we met up with Jen and Thom at the gate for Knoxville; Thom was litterally sedated, so Jen and I shared some lunch while he snoozed. Susan (co-chair of G2008 in Chicago) joined us, and then they changed our gate, so we had to wake up Thom and make our way there. I had to work, but there was no room on the plane to have Sam in his car seat, so Jen offered to take him; however, due to placement of oxygen masks, I had to keep Samuel with me. No biggie, it was a short trip, and he slept most of the way (mommy's milk is an effective narcotic sometimes).

In Knoxville, we piled up in the car Susan had rented, installed the GPS, and drove to our hotel. Except that the GPS couldn't find the hotel at first, and then when Jen reprogrammed it with an intersection, it brought us PAST the hotel into the following town. We joked that it brought us to the booze, as it made us pass a very well stocked liquor store. We got, among other things, a TUB of margarita... it was good. Wish I could find that here, it's great for parties. We drove back into Pigeon Forge (aka OMG Tacky Town, aka Vegas Light) and found our hotel.

As far as hotels go, this was on the not good side. It wasn't awful, but for those who've been to the Orlando Gathering... yeah. Like that. Water problems from torrential rain included. Although we'd find that out on Sunday... The thing about the hotel is thaty at first it seemed "not as bad as it seems", if you understand what I mean, but it progressively got worse. The room that I was sharing with Jennifer, Samuel and Eric (aka Gorebash) stank of cigarette smoke. The hotel staff did not have any non-smoking rooms, so they offered to clean the room and change the sheets. Why they don't do this between every stay is beyond me. The room was okay after that, thankfully.

Guests and staff met up in the lobby, and we made our way to the Japanese steak house across the street. Good food. Good performance. Good company. Sam was zerberted by Greg W, cuddled and snuggled by several people, and was a happy camper throughout. When we got back to the room, he went to sleep pretty easily, and we grownups had a relaxing evening chatting before turning in.

Friday
Sam woke up around 4:45 AM, and since I'm a light sleeper, he woke me up. I took him into my bed before he could wake up the others and nursed him. We both fell asleep shortly, only to all wake up around 8:30 or so.

We went to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. The deal was that you could get pancakes and syrup OR biscuits and gravy for free as long as you bought a drink. Starch and Carbs, anyone? I mostly passed on the biscuits and gravy thing. Not my thing. So after the pancakes, I made my way to host my first panel... or at least I tried! I was looking for the room like an idiot. My phone rang and I was told, "You know you're supposed to be in 3B now, right?" I said, "Yes, I know, and I'd BE there if I KNEW how to GET there!" After a few elevator rides, Sam and I finally arrived in the room. Nikki and I hosted the Basic Art Tips discussion. I taught perspective and backgrounds, Nikki and I explored character design, we explained more about how perspective affects characters, and the like. It was a good panel.

I went back to the room for Sam to have a nap. While he slept, I whipped out my laptop and continued working on the Bad Guys comic. After he woke up, I printed a bunch of stuff in the ConSuite, then we made our way to the third floor atrium again. I went to set up in the art show, chatted with some people there, and took a look at the stuff posted. Then it was Opening Ceremonies, and Samuel was getting really fussy after a while, so I had to cut my presence short and make my way back to the hotel room to have him nap some more before dinner. He had a really hard time settling down, so I skipped on the mini-golf because I would probably have been spending my time looking after him rather than playing. Plus, I was HUNGRY. I figured the stroller ride would help him get some sleep. We went out to dinner, but I ended up getting really worried and upset at the amount of noise in the place, which did wake up Samuel. However, he ended up being okay after he calmed down. Sammy took Samuel at one point, and my Sam was finding this arrangement quite pleasant! Sammy is awesome with him. Seth also got a truckfull of smiles and giggles out of him. These two would make wonderful parents. After dinner, we made our way back to the room, and Sam was put to bed. Eric went to get some ice and I prepared the margarita tub. We had some drinks and chatted the rest of the evening.

Saturday
It was around 7ish that I woke up, I think. I got up after a while, unable to sleep anymore. Everyone else was sleeping -- yes, even Samuel! I checked on him, then went to take a shower, got ready, then looked back in the room and saw that everyone was still sleeping. I lied down next to Jen again, and dozed a bit before everyone finally got up around 8:30.

We got ready and headed down for breakfast. Pancakes again, and coffee. Starch and Carbs. Wheee. Jen was holding Radio Play auditions, and I decided to audition for the first time since the beginning of Radio Plays. After that was done, I hosted the "From Fan to Pro" panel, where I answered several questions about working on the Gargoyles comics, and some about breaking into the business. It was a busy panel, which I hosted with Samuel in my arms. I had brought the Cocoa Warriors book to show (the Aztec comic that had me stressed out and which I hated, and when I received the final product a few weeks ago was quite proud of, and again very grateful for the help I got to get it done), but forgot all about bringing storyboard samples. As I chatted with someone about his art, Samuel was giggling and squealing on my shoulder, and it took me a while to realize that it was Gore playing Peekaboo with him that had him so excitedly happy.

I had a couple of hours free before finding out if I was cast in the play, and so I went to post my silly Kanthara drawing I'd done during Opening Ceremonies (and coloured in the evening) in the Art show. The drawing was an apology for not having any art for sale in the show -- I'd only posted pages from Issue 5 and one of the pages from the test I did to get the gig in the first place. Samuel was sleeping in his stroller, so I was able to leave him with JennBob and Jade so I could get some lunch; after I returned to the Dealers' Room, I took advantage of the babysitting to chat with people and look at what was for sale. I was wowed by the crochet-made dolls that Vox Mortuum had for sale. I ended up being cast in the radio play, after goofing off for a while longer, I went to the radio play rehearsal.

Rehearsal went very well. I think Samuel slept during most of it. He spent it with Sammy, who was sitting at the far end of the room. He woke up just as we finished, and I ended up nursing him at the beginning of the actual performance. This worked out fine, as he got cast as Alex (someone else provided the voice, though ;)) and was cooperative due to a full tummy when it was his turn to act. The play was an adaptation of issues 3, 4 and 5 of the comic, so everyone who was there got a SNEAK PREVIEW of the issue that's going to come out in July! MWAHAHAHA! Anyways, we put on a good show. It was a lot of fun.

There was an expedition to the tattoo parlour across the street, because a bunch of people wanted to get a tattoo. lybell designed a Phoenix Gate drawing, and everyone decided where they wanted it. I didn't want to get a tattoo, myself, but I did toy with the idea of getting a cartilage piercing on my left ear. I finally decided against it, because doing it would have only been a spur-of-the-moment thing, not something thought out; plus, the last piercing I got caused all my piercings to get infected, and my body became allergic to several metals. I'm afraid that I'd end up with an inflamed ear. So anyways, back to the tattoo: the shop didn't have time to do them that evening, so that plan got cancelled, with a rescheduling for the next day.

Dinner happened next. We went to a seafood-type place across the street, and I wasn't in the mood for fried fare (I swear, it's almost all there is to eat!) so I ordered a pasta and shrimp dish instead. And it was the. Blandest. Food. Ever. Andrea had the same thing, and agreed with me. Blegh. I had a beer, and it was American Budweiser... almost like drinking a glass of water. It was that or Bud Light, Coors Light, Michelob Light or Corona... I'm a Canadian Beer Snob. :P

We tried to go swimming before the Blue Mug (which I ended up skipping because I had to put Samuel to bed), but the pool was full of excited kids, so we cancelled that idea too. When everyone went off to the Mug, I put Sam in the playpen, let him fall asleep, and then I had a nice phone chat with Adam. I also did some drawing for the comic, designing a new character. I turned in around midnight, but had trouble falling asleep. I was merely dozing when Jen and Eric came back from the Blue Mug. We chatted a bit about it, and then I tried to sleep... and it took me a good long while to finally drift off.

Sunday
Again with the late getting up. I'm so grateful that Sam is turning into a late sleeper. We had breakfast, and since I didn't think I could stand pancakes again, I went for the eggs and meat buffet. Protein and Fat instead of Starch and Carbs. And coffee.

Since there were no panels we needed to be at until 2PM, we headed out to the tattoo parlour again. Honestly, given the tackiness and run-down look of the town, this shop was amazingly clean, and even classy. The tattoo artists were great, too. They are very professional, and fun. Jen got marked first, and then it was one after the other for the rest of the time. I went back to the hotel room to get Sam to have a nap before I needed to be at the Bad Guys panel. I nursed him into submission, then was able to work some more on the comic before I printed out the updated page 2 and headed to the panel.

Well, instead of being a panel on the comic, it turned into a marketing meeting on how to promote the comics and the show. I felt pretty useless in the discussion, and Greg felt like he was a broken record, but there were so many NEW people at the con that to them, it was all new stuff. After the panel, I went into the art show to post the six first pages of the Bad Guys comic (only page 1 was finished, page 2 was nearly there, the rest was very rough, but readable), and watched as people filed in to look at the pages.

Jen, Eric, Sam and I went back to our room and changed into nice clothes for the banquet. Samuel fell asleep in his stroller, and slept through most of the meal. Nikki, Thom, Greg and I were seated at a Head Table, which honestly, was kind of weird. Still, we had a good time, and when Samuel woke up, he nursed, then played on the floor between Greg and me, laughing up at us. Greg held Sam and zerberted him some more. Then came the Q&A. At one point, I asked people to ask questions about Bad Guys, since they hadn't at the panel, and eventually we got asked silly things like what kind of pie we like. :)

We headed back to our rooms to get changed for the Masquerade. Jen and I had agreed, just for fun, to wear our medieval outfits (corsets and all), much to our straight male friends' delight. We got back to the room for the Masquerade, and I sat with Greg and Thom to judge the costumes. It amuses me that some people will wear costumes but not participate in the competition, but oh well. It was a fun show. Hal the Gargoyle was FREAKING AMAZING. It was his first con, too. Holy crap. Anyways, I wheeled a sleeping Samuel into the next room with Greg and Thom, and we chose the winners. I ended up leaving Samuel in the quiet part of the room, and then when the party got started, I goofed and did some cancan dancing with JennBob, Nikki, ChynaRose, Jade (and maybe others? I just know the line was getting long). I mentionned to friends that I was going to put Sam to bed, and to come over for our small room party -- I am so grateful that Samuel can sleep through this, because otherwise I would not have been able to spend evenings with anyone, and Jen and Eric would have been kept out of their own room. Anyways, mixers where brought, the Margarita tub was taken out, and we shared drinks and watched silly online videos and generally had a great time. People started trickling out around 1AM... we must be getting old or something.

By the way, I made up a drink that evening, which people called a Green Jolly Rancher. Here's the recipe: in a tumbler with ice, add 1 shot Midori, 1 shot Vodka, and fill with Mountain Dew. Hey, it's what was there, and it worked really well.

Monday
I can so get used to Samuel not waking up until 8AM or later... And that morning, when I got him from his crib, I nursed him, and then he just fell asleep again. We all got ready and packed, and as he was still sleeping when it was time to go, I just put him in the stroller with his blanket to go to breakfast. He only woke up in the middle of our breakfast, so I changed his diaper and clothes down there, and then I realised that I'd have to be at the autograph panel (kept forgetting I was a Guest) and rushed upstairs to the panel with Greg and Thom.

So I signed autographs, then they held the auction, and then I signed more autographs on things won at the auction. Before long, it was time for Jen, Thom, Samuel and me to leave, so we said our goodbyes, picked up our stuff, and Patrick drove us to the airport. We got checked in, and as our planes were leaving from the same gate, we were able to have some more time together before we all had to say goodbye. I really wanted to bring Jen back with me.

On the flight to Washington, I was able to get a free seat for Samuel to be in. As our flight was delayed, I was worried that I'd be missing my plane to Montreal, since the layover was a mere 25 minutes; that plane ended up being delayed too, for which I was grateful, as it allowed me to grab some lunch, and notice that Samuel had more than overflowed from his diaper... again. Thankfully, I still had his PJs from the morning in the stroller. The (not so) funny thing is that in the Knoxville airport, Samuel's diaper had overflowed and I decided to purchase a onesie at the airport because I thought the PJs would be too warm... and he ended up in the PJs anyways. Anyways, the second flight was full, so I had Sam in my lap. He slept right through. Landing in Montreal was uneventful. Customs were easy, getting luggage was easy, and then my boys picked me up and we went for pizza. Well, I had pizza. Adam had a sub, and Matthieu asked for spaghetti, and we shared a poutine. Matthieu told me all about his weekend (with some prodding from his dad) and Sam got to tell his dad all about his trip, in the way only a four-month-old can. And later that eveing, after the boys were in bed, I got to snuggle with my husband. It's good to be home.

I'm pre-registered for next year. Chicago! I don't know if I'll get the whole family to come with me... it depends on vacation time and on money, and also on what there is to do family-wise in Chicago. I'm sure I'll find stuff. :)

KingCobra_582 writes...

THE GATHERING REPORT, PART II

MONDAY, JUNE 25TH, 2007

The last day.

Where the hell did the time go?

I went to the Dealer's Room to pick up what I thought would be my winning bid, but (my confidence seemed to be getting me absolutely nowhere this year) Doppleganger had apparently outbid me for it at the last second. I was disappointed, but it's not the end of the world. Congrats to him. :)

Especially with that Gargoyles handheld I bid $40 for.

"Look at this guy. The game is like sex to him!"

LMAO.

A Fan paid us $130 for his share of the room and checked out before Closing Ceremonies.

Speaking of Closing Ceremonies, they were, as usual, fast and bittersweet. I always hate having to say goodbye to certain people, who I consider friends, for a whole 'nother year. There were a few awards. Lots of pictures.

I saw Thom off with a picture and a hug as he left with Patrick Toman for the airport. I hope he got home alright. I still don't fully trust planes.

The con was now ifficially over, but we weren't. Not yet. 3:30 PM meeting in the lobby for us remnants who went out for a game of Laser Tag and Dinner. The original plan was for a trip to Dollywood, but the lousy weather screwed that up, and just when I was in the mood for a nice rollercoaster too. Damn it.

Greg W. and I had played 2 more games of Air Hockey there, but didn't get to finish game #2.

After Laser Tag came the dinner. And it was decided we would all walk about a mile or so to Corky's BBQ and Ribs. I had a Bacon Cheeseburger, a Root Beer without ice, (don't ask) Mozzarella sticks, and fries. Got into a movie-themed discussion with Jeb, Halloweenking, and one other guy (sorry I don't recall his name).

Found out Greg's favorite movie is 'Office Space'.

Nobody, not even Greg W. himself, wanted to go to Baskin Robbins afterward, like we had planned to. So Vid The Kid, Halloweenking, and I let everyone else return to the hotel while the three of us continued our quest for tasty frozen desert. Halloweenking, conveinently, already had his car parked by Arby's, so we drove back to the hotel from there before going our seperate ways.

Vid The Kid and I decided to relax in the Jacuzzi a little while later. We had just gotten out and were drying off when Greg W. walked by, slapping me on the back in a friendly manner, and asking how we were. I said fine and asked what's up. He said work, and then, when I suggested jokingly that it was on the next con, he responded, with a air of amusement, 'No, just work.' Must've been for the upcoming Spiderman cartoon, I reckon.

Ran into Halloweenking again and played some Air Hockey with him. Unfortunately, we couldn't find the puck and by the time, there was only enough time for us to be tied 1-1 before the game automatically ended. Crap.

I'd also had to call front desk and tell them 'never mind, we found the disc'.

TUESDAY, JUNE 26TH, 2007

Spent most of the day at the Smokies again. I wanted to just chill out in the room and watch TV all day, but David was insistent, so I shut up and we went. This time, we saw Fontana Dam, and Clingman's Dome, in North Carolina. Took more pictures. Got back to the hotel that evening and spent the rest of the night there.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 27TH, 2007

To quote Mace Malone from 'Revelations', it was "check-out time".

Woke up to watch Angel (Season 5, episode 2) before falling asleep again (during which I'd had a dream-within-a-dream about being on a College swim team and somebody drowned, or something. Weird.) and waking up at 10. I wole David up and we started packing up.

We left a $1.25 (cheap, but it was all we had) tip for the housekeeper and went to the front desk to check out. I was slightly antsy about our car's coolant issues, but I kept my anxiety to myself and focused on thinking about how the hotel hadn't been quite as grand as I expected. I'm not on the con staff or anything, but I remember thinking how unlikely it was that we would ever hold a con at the Grand Resort, much less in Pigeon Forge, again.

Never did finish that last game of Air Hockey against Greg Weisman.

I look forward to it someday.

And, yes, we made it home. Left at 11:30 AM and finally arrived at our house at 6:13 PM. No stops, just one time for gas before we'd left Tennessee, one time for a Fazoli's lunch in London, Kentucky, and one time when we got pulled over for speeding (eep).

And with that ends Gathering.

See you in Chicago in '08.

Flanker writes...

Flanker's con journal.

Friday

To make my 6am flight, I wanted to be at the Ottawa Airport for 4am. To get there for 4am, I needed to leave Petawawa Ontario at around 2am. So why bother going to bed right? During the drive I had a random scene from Anchorman looping in my head again and again. I arrived in the darkened parking lot laughing by myself in my car. Not a good sign. I enter the terminal and realize that I have crossed the line from keen early into stupid early. I laid on a bench with my luggage and set my cell phone alarm for 4am. Which was pointless because you don't go into the deepest sleep on a bench. Despite NWA's sign stating they open at 4am, they really meant about 4:25am. Being early was especially pointless since everyone in the airport was channeled into one massive checkpoint and none of them were ready to work until after five. But once all those hurdles were overcome, I slept through take off on both flights. Once in Knoxville, Sarah (the Great) was waiting for me having just landed herself. Her mood seemed enhanced by some drinks at the airport bar. I picked up my luggage and rental car. I opted for a Dodge Charger because I very badly wanted to test drive one and this seemed like a good opportunity until they added fuel, tax and insurance costs. Sarah and I hopped in and navigated our way into Pigeon Forge in what I felt was a reasonable time. I checked into my room with no problems and then blundered my way to the con area to register, which is where I found Shaun (BrooklynX) who was going to be splitting the room along with Sarah and I. Shaun couldn't guarantee me a banquet ticket so I told him he'd be sleeping outside. I also started canvassing con goers for interest in a trip to a gun range, something I had mapped out prior to the con. The interest was high, but once a plan was formulated it was difficult to find everyone and pass it on. Sarah and I auditioned for the radio play with the rest of the con. I thought my southern accent was good and was overall confident that I might get some part in the play. Sarah talked me into sneaking out halfway through opening ceremonies which wasn't hard because my stomach agreed with her plan to go find food. We hit that Japanese place across the street, where they light everything on fire and juggle knives. I had alot of leftovers which came in handy later. Sarah had a golf game to go win, I was left to my own devices. The music video/open role playing seemed a little sedated, so I went for a drive on the mountain roads in my Dodge Charger, exploring routes to the gun range. I came back to Sarah the Triumphant and had pretty much the only full nights sleep I'd be getting the whole weekend.

Saturday

I dragged Sarah and Shaun out of bed bright and early since Sarah was coming with me to the range and Shaun had to get up and do Con stuff. I tried to pass on to everyone interested to meet up for 8am in the lobby for breakfast. The line up for the buffet was crazy, so my shooters (Kathy, Mike and Sarah) and Shaun agreed to check out the nearby pancake house. For some reason it was much less busy and we were enjoying each others company when a string of zombies that looked like Gathering Attendees shuffled by in a daze. Yelling, waving and throwing things all failed to get there attention so I had to get up and walk 5 feet to their booth and shake some sense into them. Carter, Kelly, Leo, Francis and Esteban (holy crap I remembered your names!) all agreed to come along to the gun range. I was worried this was going to be too big, then too small, then too big again! After a great breakfast and minor navigation bloopers we found the range. I was not happy to see how packed the parking lot was at the gun club. I approached Leo and his passengers and told to them to prepare for disappointment. I could hear gunfire and was thinking that maybe the range was booked by a class or something. We went inside to a very bright clean professional gun range. There was a shooting class present, but they weren't going to need to fire until long after we would be leaving. The gentleman who ran the club displayed every degree of Southern manners and hospitality and was thrilled to have so many new shooters. I didn't even get any heck for being Canadian. In fact, I ask about discounts for soldiers or veterans and he said he'd look into it. We rented a couple guns and unpacked the ones I brought and got started. We had a blast (pardon the pun) and Leo may have lied about never shooting a gun in his life. His groupings were outstanding, even better than mine. Once we were done shredding paper I started to pack up and exited the firing line to hear someone in a deep southern drawl ask 'Now, whut exactlay, isa Gahgoyle? I now that Trawlls live unda bridges, whut about gahgayles?'. I forgot who had the patience to answer his questions but it was certainly entertaining for the rest of us. We got back to the Con and I ran into Karine and little happy Sam. We looked around the art area to see if they had posted the cast for the play and I encountered the fabulous Jade Griffon and her amazing gummigolyes that were so confusing to look at it physically disoriented me. I decided to take a crack at drawing for the first time this millennium in Shaun's book. This killed enough time (and let me sit down for a bit) before the play rehearsal. The cast was huge and I was pretty excited. I thought it was going to be fun to be directed by Greg and have a few lines. Then I found out I was going to be playing Goliath so I was a little tense at first. Eric had to do Thailog, which was way more dialog than Goliath, and two other characters with accents. He did such an awesome job too. Greg never corrected me so I guess I did ok. Obviously I can't get into details, but I will say that I had to deliver a really serious line right after something comical happened and it gave me small glimpse into the real challenges of acting because I had to stop laughing and instantly change moods. Things wound down a bit after the play, and people kept approaching me a little upset that I went shooting without them. Then I recall some of us going to eat at Pizza Hut where I took a photo of some crazy ugly kid smearing his face against the window to our booth. Then of course there was the Blue Mug. I tried to find out if Owen was gay (fit, polite, smart, clean and eerily loyal to a handsome man) Greg told me whatever floats my boat. After Blue Mug was over I approached him and asked sarcastically what kind of nail polish Demona wears in human form, to kinda make fun of how crazy specific fans can get on some details. He just kind of stared at me like I was nuts while (Jen I think?) explained that she used red because it matched her hair or something. The rest of my memories of saturday are spotty at best.

Sunday

Sunday started with myself and a lovely lady (sorry I forgot your name) following Thom around looking for a fast coffee. We ended up crossing the street to some restaraunt and getting some coffees and biscuits barely in time for Thom to get to his Mug a Guest which he quickly renamed 'The Wake Your Ass Up Panel'. It turned into a bunch of us discussing our favourite classic horror movies and finding out the crazy roles Thom had taken shots at over the years. A bunch of crazies went off to get tattoos, I wanted to check out the Badguys/Gargoyles panel, where getting information was like drawing blood from a stone, although Greg did leak that a certain character would be appearing in Badguys, can you believe it? After that wrapped up I kidnapped Kelly and we went on a rapid clothes shopping mission because I wanted something a little spiffier for the banquet, for which I was finally able to get a ticket for. I got a khaki blaser type thing from banana republic and we dashed back to the hotel. The banquet started and I wish the heat didn't sap my appetite so bad because the food was incredible. I was only able to tackle one plate because I was more interested in drinking lots of water. We had finished eating and Sarah and Tatiana (cant remember real name!) were commenting that I looked a lot like Matt Bluestone with my hair slicked back and tan clothing. So we just up and bolted away from the Banquet with Mike in tow because he had some last minute costume ideas too. I bought a toy badge and rubber training gun (cant have anything too real looking right Hudson?) while Sarah and crew hit a wal mart getting me a clip on tie and some medical garb for Mike. Back at the con I forced my new block of yellow rubber into a holster and took my con badge lanyard and attached the badge to it. Costume was done! I filled out a form for 'accidental Matt Bluestone'. I had some time to kill before the masquerade so I began wandering aimlessly to see who I could bump into. On my first try I ran into Greg and Thom coming out of the stairs. They were going to play some air hockey so I tagged along to take pictures. Little did I know of the epic event about to unfold. What started as two guys having a fun game of air hockey became a tournament of intense passion, focus and carnage not seen since the Coliseum days of Rome. The Gods themselves trembled in terror from the war cries and inhuman savagery displayed by the world's greatest token spending athletes. Greg came out swinging, crushing all oppostion before him, like a tank against an anthill. However, he was ill equipped to deal with my foreign trapping style, aided by years of intensive Shaolin Kung Fu training. Spectators wept blood as I barely won. My victory was short lived as I was slaughtered like a spring lamb by an unknown challenger who's sole purpose was to humiliate me and then vanish back into the mists she emerged from. I thought it was all winding down. Little did I know Greg was plotting and simmering with rage at his loss to me, the only one capable of surviving his onslaught. He challenged me to a rematch and I accepted. Surely he was getting exhausted from maiming so many peons, I would have the edge. The masses gathered for this final exhibition and after another refreshing mouthful of my own sweat we began. My arrogance and assumed supremacy worked in Greg's favour, getting him a score of 6 to 1 in a fraction of a second. Despite Greg's ability to push the puck past the visible light spectrum my strong defensive tactics began to pay off. Tired, Greg's mental grip on the Earth's orbit began to weaken and 'normal' physics and thermal dynamics came back into play. My score slowly climbed and sure enough we had reached the Apocalyptic number of 6-6. The puck slammed back and forth atop the air table forged in the Jurassic era by super intelligent raptors. With the course of history hanging in the balance I managed one final shot that ended the destructive conflict. Greg did not appear to be choked with rage. He congratulated me on my victory but after releasing me from my handshake he began chanting in Latin while his eyes began glowing. Once he began levitating I knew it was time to get out of there.

Sarah had arrived and attached the clip on tie and I made my way to the masquerade. The other costumes looked great of course. I felt ashamed that I had just thrown mine together at the last minute for like, ten bucks when the others put so much effort into theirs. Except Mike, I'm on to your little scheme...
I ran out and did my bit but nobody told me where to go when I was done so I ended up wandering in circles spewing silly dialog I had thought up minutes before going out. I think it was Jade Griffon (who also found my sun glasses earlier) was pointing out where to go as I started stripping. I put the Blue in Bluestone. Belly dancing seemed to be a popular theme so it became easy to imagine that I was in 'From Russia with Love' and that a gypsy riot was about to break out any second. The judges went to decide on who would win in which category and we took photos of each other in highly dignified poses. Greg and his posse re emerged with their decisions. Sarah was awarded Champion of the Universe in Mini Put Golf. Mike won best canon character. I was recognized for my air hockey skills and was also given the Thom Adcox 2007 memorial award, which is confusing in many ways. Thom Adcox is both still alive and not me, so why I'm getting his award is perplexing. I interpreted the award to mean Sluttiest Attention Whore '07. I determined this on the way to receive the trophy from Greg, and since I seemed to have suddenly earned this new reputation I politely asked him to place the trophy in my belt which I had graciously extended. I then offered everyone present to witness what I felt was an excellent location for a trophy. The masquerade was over and various shenanigans ensued. We played 'Uno' which was new to me. After a quaint remark I made about Thom's fashion sense he led the table in a revolt against me ensuring I would never win a single round. My memories of the rest of the evening are spotty at best.

Monday.

Never in history has a monday started so good and ended in such total misery. I quickly packed and checked out of the hotel, informing the front desk of the mattress frame that disintegrated when Sarah and I tried to adjust it. I would like to get off my chest that the hotel was utter garbage. But hey, it was cheap. My second range trip was another success, this time Rob, Trim, Revel, Spacebabie, Lynati, Gside and Tatiana came out and we dealt with the same friendly gentleman who was thrilled to have me bring more customers to his business. Many targets were expertly riddled but nobody matched Leo's skill. When that occurred to me I knew I found someone to give my 'special police' badge to since I had already given away my ugly yellow rubber gun. Once back at the Con, we loitered about saying goodbyes to each other (I hate this part every year) and we sat through the closing ceremonies, sans Thom. Many awards were given to the outstanding artists who contributed to the art show. I got a chance to stand up and present Leo with his badge, and he showed his target to the crowd (understanding why he brought it along now). With the badge and his huge camera he looked like a crime scene photographer. After discussing how awesome next year's con is going to be I yelled out 'show up OR I'LL FIND YOU!' to some giggles but Chicago's con chair (I'm so sorry I forgot your name) quickly followed up with or 'I'll SEND LEO' to roars of laughter. Oh openly threatening strangers is so much fun. Once the ceremony was over Sarah and I said our goodbyes to everyone and made for the airport.

WARNING: The rest of this journal is just miserable bitching.

I get to the airport well ahead of schedule and turn in my rental car with no issues. Sarah and I split up to our respective airlines. I was delighted to stand at the NWA desk for almost 40 minutes before they informed me that my flight has been changed to Delta airlines. So my 6pm flight through Detroit is now a 520pm flight through Atlanta (the opposite direction of Canada). With an earlier departure time it was decided I would be a great candidate for random extra security screening. I was nervous that chemical tests would reveal Gun Shot Residue (GSR) on my clothes so I told the guard that I was at a range before any alarms went off. I was told it wasn't a GSR test and that I was good to go. I rushed to my gate and spotted Rob and Anne eating at Ruby Tuesdays. I gave a quick hi but wanted to make sure I wasn't late. Weather in Atlanta was leading to serious delays so I had time to sit and chat with Anne, Rob and A Fan who were all waiting in the same terminal. I stole all of Rob and Anne's food because I was starving and didn't know if I had time to order my own. And because I'm a jerk. After loafing about the airport I finally left last after everyone else at around 8 or 9pm. I watched the throwers place my single black bag on the tarmac and walk away. I asked the lady behind the desk why my bag was on the tarmac and not in the plane. She said not to worry but I didn't listen to her. Naturally, the Atlanta to Ottawa flight was also delayed so I had a couple of hours to spend in an airport that was paralyzed with bad weather all day. Every single gate was crowded with irate passengers, crew and airport staff. I was thrilled to not be back in Petawawa. I hope my plane developed a fault and I would get to stay in the US for one more night. The 11pm flight turned into a 1am flight. At around 3 or 4am, I was finally on native soil but the worst was yet to come. I stood at the baggage claim hypnotized by the rotating belt. It stopped and I had no black bag. I was called over to a desk where forms were already waiting and myself and several others began filling out missing forms. As of writing, most of my civilian clothes, shower stuff, various paper work, knives and three handguns are unaccounted for. Thank god I had the foresight to retrieve my car keys so I was able to get back to base. I really hate to end the journal on such a downer but I did have an amazing weekend and I'm pumped for Chicago (not just because I can DRIVE there either).

PS Whats with all the insane right wingers posting questions these days?

Vid the Kid writes...

Gathering 2k7 Log

Wednesday, June 20
We got up early today, after getting too tired last right to do much serious packing. Still, somehow we managed to finish by 9AM-ish, and after having breakfast' we departed closer to 10.
South of Cincinnati, we stopped for a quick lunch at Skyline Chili. When we parked, a Puddle of coolant formed on the pavement under the car. After determining the leak isn't fatal, we continued. We bought some extra coolant as a precaution. Then, coming down off the Mountain near Jellico, traffic came to a complete stop or the freeway. Like in the Skyline parking lot, the car was on a downhill slope. Like at Skyline, a leak formed. But this time, it was more Serious. After consulting with my dad via cell phone, and improvising a method to remove a hot radiator Cap, I added the coolant i had bought and continued our Journey with a loose radiator cap, to prevent pressure from building up and forcing coolant out of the system. At the next exiti I refueled and bought sone More coolant. We Made it the rest of the way to the hotel without incident.
I've been through Pigeon Forge before, but not as a driver. Now I know why my dad always preferred to stay in Townsend. This place is like Las Vegas, but with a hokey southern flavor.
Ed and I checked into the Grand, watched some TV, and checked out the pool and jaccuzzi. Then I consulted a map and located two things: a Pizza Hut and a grocery where they're not trying to fleece tourists. We had to go back up to Sevierville for that second one. On the plus side, I found a back road to take us there instead of the congested Parkway. Except -that back road is being replaced with a six-lane divided artery. I guess they're expecting a lot of expansion east of the Parkway. It's rot busy yet, though.
Back to the hotel room for shower, TV, and journaling. I'm starting to get too tired to write so my Pochet PC can translate correctly on the first try. But I'm staying up (It's now 01:27) because a new Myth Busters is on. Oh yeah, and My left fore-arn is sunburned fron the drive. Ed's right forearm is similarly burned. That's it for today.

Thursday, June 21
I'm getting behind here. It's Friday afternoon as I write this.Yesterday I drove Ed around to all the Smoky Mountains locations I used to visit with My family as a kid. Look Rock, Cade's Cove. Newfound Gap, anong others. (BTW, on the way to the park, I noticed a Kroger store here in Pigeon Forge.) At first Ed was a little freaked about the heights. I promised him that Look Rock was the most heightsy thing we would do all week. And he didn't panic. By the time we got to Newfound Gap, he was used to all the mountain driving. I bet when we're on that mountain near Jellico on the way home, he'll have no problem at all. So we come back to the hotel, and watched Seinfeld while waiting for our roommate, A Fan, to show up. He arrived, and shortly after, so did Greg and Thom. I don't remember anything after that... Just kidding. Ed stuck around the lobby to hob-nob or something while I helped A Fan settle in. He needed some network cable, and I needed sorie earwax-removal stuff. So we went to Wal- Mart on the south side of Sevierville. And we forgot to tell Ed we were going. But he didn't seem too upset when we got back. Oh yeah. I chose a nice back-roads way back to the hotel from the store, except the road was curvier than it looked on the Map. I expect better of you, Seeger Map Company. A fan ordered pizza and I watched tv or something. I don't remember exactly what. I was tired, and went to sleep around 11:30 .

Friday, June 22
It's Saturday, and here I am writing down Friday's stuff. I slept in, journaled for Thursday. And headed to the Voice acting panel. It was hard to hear, though, because my ears were still plugged and the stuff I had bought the previous night didn't work at all. After the panel I went back to the room for Lunch. And then the con suite for a few hours until Opening Ceremonies. That was Cool. We got some good news about the comic, and some news which could potentially become good news in the future, about a Movie. Also during the ceremonies. I remembered the word search puzzles I'd made, so before the music video screenings,I went to the room to get the puzzles and took them to the con suite. I also requested that Greg and Thom get copies. I'm in the con suite now, though, and I don't see the puzzles. Anyway, next was the music videos. Too much emo, in my opinion, when they were done. Everyone just stayed seated, watching the G2007 promo loop, hypnotized. Ed and I went to the jaccuzi for awhile. Then headed to 2A and just hung out watching someone draw a naked garg and a happy little tree. Then we went back to the room and finished off the night with a couple episodes of futurama. And I got too tired to journal the days events.

Saturday, June 23
First thing in the morning, I headed to registration to sign up for the Greg mug- a. Guest which was later in the day. Unfortunately, the signup sheets for both mug-a-guest sessions had been put out friday and filled up quickly. So Ed signed us up as "alternates" for the mug-a-guest- with Thom.
Then Ed, A Fan, and I hung out in the con suite for several hours. Well. A few hours anyway. We set up my crappy, crappy DVD player there and put on, of course, Gargoyles. The suite was pretty full by the time ''The Mirror" came up. Which is good, because that's the one everyone wants to see. When Ed headed to radio play rehearsals, he took my camera for some reason. I had to get it back fm him before the show so I could take pictures of him and the other performers. The radio play. Bythe way, was Chapters 3,4,5 of Clan- Building. Yes. That's Issue 5 before it's out. And it just keeps getting better. Greg won't really let me say more.
Mystery Gargoyles theater 3OOO... That was fun. But without being able to hear the dialog well (stipid ears) -it was difficuit lo make snappy comebacks. Next was the blue mug, which of course was fun. Unlike last year, Thom took off his pants. Yay. And Greg explained Elisa's line of thought with Goliath not fitting into the expectations she had for her life. That really resonated with Me, reminding me of that morning in 2002 when I realized my life probably wouldn't be like I had Imagined. I guess realizing you're in love with a member of another species is somewhat similar to realizing you're in love with a member of the same sex. Somewhat.
The blue mug ended a little after 1 am, and everyone went to bed.

Sunday, June 24
Sunday norning, I actually woke up before A fan and Ed. We watched TV and Ed and I headed to the mug_a-guest with Thom, since some seats had opened up. We talked Mostly about show business and living in L.A., since a couple others in attendance were also from that area. After that was the Gargoyles/ Bad Guys comic panel. A lot of people had questions which Greg refused to answer. Of course. But there was some good information about the comic structure, and we got to see some nifty (over art.
After that. I went to the con suite to loaf. The con suite is good for that. When it was time for the banquet, A fan had his usual anti -banquet. He and I and this other guy went to T.G.I. Fridays where a couple other con-goers were already eating. I made a meal of overpriced fried mozarella and a grape slushie, which some what seemed to defeat the purpose of shunning an overpriced banquet.
Bach to the roon, ard more TV. At 8, The Masquerade began. Some good costumes, some awards, dancing, and a free T-shirt. And I got bored. I'm not really into dancing. So I went back to the room again and basically watched Adult Swim until going to sleep.

Monday, June 25
Now I'm getting really behind. It's Tuesday night and I'm just now getting to writing about Monday. Monday morning, I slept in and took a nice long shower, while Ed went to the dealer's room to spend his last cash at the aucton. Then came the dosing ceremonies with Announcements about next year, and then awards for art and music videos. Except Most of the award recipients had left already. Even A Fan, our roommate and one of three people (Greg Included) to have come to all 11 Gatherings, had departed.
So after that, everyone discussed what to do next. It was raining on and off, so Dollywood didn't sound too great. Instead, we walked down Parkway to an arcade for laser tag. The 20 of us were divided into two groups. Ed and I, as well as Greg, were in the second group. A bunch of us took turns playing Greg at air hockey. Not having much practice, I enjoyed losing to Greg. When our turn for laser tag came, I had fun. It was a free-forall. I didn't do particularly well score -wise, (7th in a field of about 13) but my accuracy was the highest, with about 2 of every 7 shots hitting something.
After that, we :dscussed ice cream. The Baskin Robbins was quite a distance, so we decided to walk that way, Building up an appetite for dinner, which we had at a Porky's. By the time that was done, nobody wanted ice cream anymore except for ne, Ed, and a guy named Halloween king. He had diiven there, so we didn't have to walk all the way back to the hotel.
Filled out the rest of the evening with TV and the jacuzzi. Spotted Greg one last time walking past the jacuzzi. Then bed. Basically.

Tuesday, June 26
Today turned into another Smokies sight- seeing day. First we hit Clingman's Dome, which turned out to be much busier than I'd expected. I haven't been there before, and the broken clouds at the same level as the mountain top Made for an eerie situation. Maybe Xanatos should have moved Castle Wyvern there. Much more scenic than Manhattan. ***Last-minute edit: This was intended as a joke. Although I highly doubt it would be used, since it goes against established canon, I hereby release any rights to the concept. So Greg or any fanfic author can use concept, regardless of whether or not they thought of it first, with no opposition from me, legal or otherwise.***
Next stop was Fontana Dam, which turned out to be a much longer drive than I'd expected. I've been there once, but my dad drove then. I usually study a map better before driving somewhere new, but today I didn't mind the extra mileage on the North Carolina highways. Coming around the west end of the park, there was some really thick fog on the little Tennessee river. That was cool.
Bach at the botel, we microwaved a pizza. More TV. More jacuzzi. More TV. Some people tried to come into our room, apparently having been told that they had it for the night. And then I got caught up with my con log.

Wednesday, June 27
So we woke up this morning -- when we got a wake-up call at 7am which we hadn't asked for -- went back to sleep, and woke up again around 10. Ed showered, and I started organizing our stuff which had been spread around the room in our 7-night stay at the Grand. We loaded everything into the car, made a final check of the room, and then checked out -- a half hour after the nominal check-out time -- and we made our way back to Columbus. Instead of the scenic route through Cumberland Gap which I'd been considering, we decided to stick to the Interstates, in case of more car trouble. Somewhere in the middle of Kentucky, I got pulled over for speeding when I thought the construction zone had ended; after explaining the simple mistake, I got off with a warning. We hit Cincinnati in rush hour. The radio traffic reports there are very timely and accurate; we hit the traffic jam exactly where they said we would. In Columbus, you could get stuck in traffic and not hear about it on the radio for a half hour; or you could hear about a really bad accident and drive past the described location minutes later and see absolutely nothing. Anyway, about 3 minutes from home, the "low coolant" light came on. No big deal. It's been refilled already. Still, I gotta get that radiator fixed. Total trip stats: 1,100.8 miles driven, 41.5 gallons of fuel consumed; that's 26.5 miles per gallon.
Oh yeah, and I'm having Ed proofread this to fix the worst lexicographical errors. Not typograhical, but lexicographical; because nearly all of it was written by hand and my writing interpreted as text by my pocket PC. Today's stuff was typed directly, though. And I'll post it to Ask Greg shortly.

Mara Cordova writes...

So normally I am pretty bad about posting my con journal. I'll write a hyper-intensive lead up describing the trip up to the hotel the night before the con and then... nadda. In past years either most of my convention experience was such that I cold not post it publically, or I simply was too exhausted to remember any of it (2003 comes to mind) or any variety of things. But not this year, no. This year, I took notes in the car as I rattled my day off to my mate Aaron. (One of the nice parts of not spending the entire con attached at the hip is the being able to talk anecdote without having him go "I know, I was there- remember?"

FRIDAY: Got up around nine and had a very long shower before going to Karine's panel. I'm still quite impressed at how she can juggle work, friends, and baby concurrently- during. a. panel. After that I hung out with Hudson, Dancer, and Ash in their room, we watched car chases on t.v. Much fun. Eventually it was time for Opening Ceremonies, and enjoyed seeing the dvd version of the pitch because it is slightly different from Greg's version. (I'm still not quite sure which I like better, if one could make distinctions over such things.) The Last is getting intense and I *really* need to get off my butt and do the scens I called dibs on. I know how to draw Mole, and lord knows I know how to draw Demona, but watching the current version really helped cement in my mind what I'll be doing. SO hopefully there'll be mor for next year. After Opening Ceremonies, there was dinner. I think I had pizza but I don't remember. I hung out with Cat, Rika, Dave, and Cheri for a long bit, my notes tell me. Eventually I went to bed around four am.

SATURDAY: I had a panel with Nikki which was an othercon open discussion dealie. I'm really glad that Othercon is still going strong. I sat at Artist's Alley after that, and after seeing the artshow decided that there was not enough adult art work. So, I drew some. The reason I didn't have any for sale was because I didn't think it'd be nice to charge for stuff when I so obviously came to the convention unprepared. I hung out with Jade, Silver and Jordan. I looked at the dealer's stuff and met Ethan's girlfriend who was the one who made the gargoyle crochet dolls. Much awesomeness. Let's see... spent a lot of time with Erik and his girlfriend Steph... eventually there was the awesomecake that was Radio Play. It was engaging, revealing *singsong* and I'm not telling!(Wow, Mozilla Firefox is awesome, I had an error and had to reboot my computer but I didn't lose all of this text. Geez.)After Radio Play, I spent more time in Kathy's room with Kathy, JEB, Steph, Erik and Lynati. Then some MST3K and Blue Mug. Thom is absolutely adorable, and I felt some odd amount of pride when Aaron was the butt of his joke. (Har de har har.) I also was happy that it *seems* like we got a small reveal because of I picture I was doodling during that mug, but, yet again, not telling. You shoulda come to this con, come to nest year's con. There must have been more, since I went to bed again, around four am, but it's not in my notes.

SUNDAY: More time spent in Artist's alley, and the other othercon art panel. Silver and Jordan also came up to the board and it's just great to get all of these other perspectives since a good percentage of the fandom are artists. I helped Cheri, Cat, Dave, and Rika guard the artshow during the Banquet and also camped Greg's sketchbook. I didn't win it at auction, but it was fun to look at the randomness that is another person's headspace when their bored. Seriously. Me, Aaron and Lynati dressed up for Masquerade... I hadn't planned to originally, but since Lyn was going as "slutty" and Aaron was going as a pimp, I had to throw something together. So I was cheap slutty and Lyn was classy slutty. Good times. The dance was fun, especially lipsynching to RENT with Jen and Lyn respectively. Then I went out for a smoke, talked with KingCobra, Doppleganger, Leo and Sadistic Cow.. and came back to... The Twilight Zone. The dance was empty and there was an intense game of UNO going on in the other room. So I went upstairs to face THE LEAK. (Bah bah!) We moved boxes and tables and a big job became quick and easy because SO MANY PEOPLE HELPED. Like, yaye. Then I sat down between Alan and GregX. Alan gave me the best foot massage I think I have ever had, and we talked for many a hour it felt like until it was time to go to bed.

MONDAY: Was primarily time for goodbyes. I got and gave a lot of hugs, and I also did more of the volunteer thing by writing out the labels for the artshow awards. Then I had dinner with Aaron, Lynati, Quindar and Norcumi- which was kinda bittersweet since Lyn was leaving with them to Pennsylvania. After we came back to hang out in the con suite. I'm a light-weight and took a nap after about an hour. Then we (Aaron and I) spent more time in the consuite. The group came back after dinner and Aaron played Guitar Hero and I talked fic with Rika, Nikki, Dave, and Patrick. The waiter from the restaurant they went to dinner came to the hotel to hang out, and he was a really nice sweet guy. He taught us slight of hand tricks and during a smoke break me, Cat, and Jenbob's boi who's name I am blanking on even though he is the defininitve best, took a short night swim. Eventually, again, bedtime.

TUESDAY: I packed, hung out until people got ready to leave. More goodbyes, and hugs. We packed the car and said goodbye to Greg in the lobby while he was writing out one of his con journal entries. We helped move Hudson and crew to another motel since he had needed work on his car done. Then we got on and went home.

Thank you to everyone I got to spend time with and talk to during this con. I had a marvelous time, and it's wonderful to see how everyone is growin' up in a way over the years. And maybe not a little bit of that is because of a show we all watched as pre-teens and teenagers?

See you all in Chicago.

KingCobra_582 writes...

The Gathering 2007, Part 2

SATURDAY, JUNE 23RD, 2007

What a slow morning.

Hung around 3A, (A.K.A. The Dealer's Room) and bought a G2008 T-shirt. David and I considered registering for the next con (which, at the point that I typing this up, we have decided we will. No reason not to, after all.) but that we would have to do it online, at our own home, due to lack of cash (at the time, I'd only had enough for one of us to attend and not the other) funds.

I went down to 2A to check on the Radio Play Cast List. No one there, and, more importantly, no list. Yet. I decided the judges were probably going over it at lunch, and that I would see it soon enough. So I hopped the elevator down to the 1st Floor, strolling to the Con Suite to watch DVDs (A Fan had asked David and I if we would temporarily loan them our DVD player, to which we agreed. We had also brought our copy of Gargoyles Season 2, Volume 1 over. I had also brought over a Aqua Teen Hunger Force DVD over, but quickly figured out that no one, not even myself ATM, would most likely be interested in THAT.) and had a good time.

The Radio Play. How fun.

Like I'd said already, I was confident that I'd get Brooklyn. I didn't. I got Malibu, to my astonishment. But, hey, I'm not overly picky. I was happy to get what I did. I played the clone role with gusto, IMO. Rehearsal came before the actual play, and I was proud of myself during both. The script was the storyline for comic issues #3-5. If anyone wants to know what happens in #5... sorry buddy. #5 isn't out in stores yet, and Greg Weisman asked us to keep quiet about it, a plea I intend to follow. Anyone asks me about issues 3 or 4, that's fine. Those issues are already out. But I'm keeping my mouth shut on what happens in #5.

Thom played Brentwood instead of Lex. Life is just full of surprises.

Whoever (Jay, maybe?) played Goliath sounded more Broadway to my ears, but that could just be me.

MGT3K. Another beloved panel of mine. The choice episodes for this year were, in this order, 'Lighthouse In The Sea Of Time', 'Outfoxed', 'The Price', and, as a bonus, 'The Mirror'. It was still slightly difficult spitting out riffs, though I was more warmed up this year. I guess I don't have much of a sense of humor.

Blue Mug-A-Guest was enjoyable. Started out 'Blue' enough, to my satisfaction. But that quickly changed, to my dissappointment. Some of Thom's work was discussed, (I should watch for that coming Scooby-Doo DTV) as were the recasting choices for both Fox and David Xanatos. In an attempt to get things back on the 'Blue' track, I asked Thom how much time he thinks Lex spends on certain Internet activities, (everyone reacted just the way I wanted, with cheering and laughter) to which he said 'Several hours a night', and, then I asked, in regards to the MacBeth/Demona spell, if MacBeth ever had PMS as well. More laughter, more cheers, and even an 'OMG' was in there somewhere. :P Unfortunately, it still didn't stay as raunchy as I'd hoped.

David and I retired to our room at 1:30 am. He fell asleep almost instantly while I stayed awake awhile to watch some anime.

SUNDAY, JUNE 24TH, 2007

We went to the Thom Adcox Mug-A-Guest first. More movie talk. No problem there. In fact, movies are my favorite subject of conversation. I expressed interest in someday getting into the acting business, and Thom said that moving to a big city, like L.A. or New York, would be a good step. He expressed some annoyance over A-list actors (people like Jennifer Aniston or Drew Barrymore or Mike Myers) stealing vocal work from the lesser-knowns. He gave us all demo CDs that had some of his radio/TV commercial samples, (which I heard in the car later. Fun to listen to.) before we all went as a group to a nearby tattoo shop. It seems everyone was settled on a Phoenix Gate tattoo. Having wanted a tattoo, any tattoo, for awhile now, I'd hoped to join in. But I didn't have enough cash on me (dammit) and David (insert grumbling here), who would've had to charge it, said I should wait until my next birthday (my 25th in the fall) and see if I still want it then. I had wanted to just do something on the spur of the moment and not have to think about it first (for once), plus I don't like the feeling of being left out, but I sighed and unhappily agreed. I can wait if I have to. I made a comment, (during which I found he was 47.) about Thom being one great big tattoo by the time he turns 50. Having no panels ATM, I killed the time by looking for possible tattoo images for use in the future, which I did not find.

I even went back later to re-check the images on a whim. Found some possibilities this time. I definitely know what I want now.

Played 2 games Air Hockey with Jeb. Kicked his ass with a final score of 7-1 both times. :D

Air Hockey is one of my favorite games, BTW. Has been since childhood.

The Banquet (my first) was delicious. My friends Shawn and Louie were supposed to attend the con with us, but had to bail out (summer classes), and Louie had already bought a Banquet ticket, so I ended up with it instead. The menu was top notch. I had Mashed Potatoes with Gravy, (yum) Chicken with Rice, 3 cups of sweetened Tea (and I don't even DRINK Tea!), a dinner roll, and a piece of chcolate cake for desert. There were a lot of questions for Greg, Thom, and... what was her name? Damn, it slips my mind... Anyway. Abby asked a LOT of hyper Puck-themed questions. No prizes for guessing who she likes. Wow.

I played more Air Hockey, this time against Greg, Thom, and what's-his-name (He would later show up as Matt Bluestone at the Masquerade). I beat what's-his-name fairly easily, but, with me endlessly cursing like a sailer during and after the matches, Greg and Thom both smacked me down. Hard.

Speaking of the Masquerade, it was great. Lots of pictures. I knew right off that Halloweenking (as the Gargoyle) would win 1st prize, which he did. Tried to get a goofy picture (think bunny ears for the camera) with Thom, but he wanted to mingle, so I shrugged it off. Participated in the A-hole song (performed by Dennis Leary, in case you didn't know), which I didn't know all the lyrics of. I had to fake it, which I like to think I did okay at.

A few minutes later, I noticed there was some action next door, and, curious, went to check it out. It was a bunch of people (including Thom) playing "Uno". I said before that I like games, but I hadn't played that since I was seven, and, besides, it looked like there were enough players. So I was content to sit and watch instead.

Eventually, Jade Griffin came by and we looked through some of the photos she'd taken, including some of the ladies' room (I guess it'd flooded or something.). I quickly got tired of that, though, and left, running into Karl. I'd played a game of Air Hockey against him earlier and offered a rematch, but he declined.

I went to my room and fell asleep. Forgive me if I sound British here, but the term 'completely knackered' seems to be the most appropriate here.

To Be Concluded.

KingCobra_582 writes...

Gathering 2007, Part 1

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 20TH, 2007

Vid The Kid and I left home at 9:30 am. The journey itself was hell, with traffic jams, and the occasional coollant change, once the damn car decided to start leaking. Getting there was a real b***h, but eventually we made it. Took longer than it was supposed to, though.

A Fan called to let us know that he would be arriving on the following day. VTK and I went on a grocery run to last us for the week that we'd be there.

That's all that happened today, aside from our sunburned (David's left and my right) arms.

THURSDAY, JUNE 21ST, 2007

I woke up and went to the lobby for breakfast, whilst letting David sleep, though I wasn't overly hungry and ended up having a simple cup of orange juice. With pulp, apparently. I woke David up a little while later and we watched the 1st 'Final Destination' on DVD, then had some actual breakfast (cause I was hungry at that point), and left to spend the day driving around the Smoky Mountains National Park, which was one of the most parts of the week (besides the con, of course). 1st stop was a beautifully scenic overlook which, even with my (dwindling) fear of heights, didn't bother me much. Heh. Go figure. We went to Look Rock next. After a half-mile hike through the woods, we finally reached a view tower. Ascending to the top (or as close as we could get to it), we were both blown away by the view. David promised me that it would be the most 'heightsi-est' thing we'd do. I was both happy and dissappointed about that. I was uncertain to go on the tower, but I didn't want to dissappoint David so I followed him anyway. Glad I did. I could see for miles up there. If you want to see pictures, they should be on my website (http://www.geocities.com/kingcobra49036) soon.

We also took a self-portrait of ourselves at the SMNP sign, before driving to Cades Cove. We saw, at a camping site, a rock formation where David and his 2 brothers (I guess they'dve already been to Tennessee before) used to play when they were kids. Then it was off to a scenic loop (God, the state is beautiful), then, chronologically, the John Oliver cabin, a 180-year old Baptist Church, (which was a bit odd for me, because I've never considered particularly religious.) old-fashioned of course, with a cemetary, and an old 1800's styled mill. I've never seen a water wheel before. At this point, I was started to get bored of all the driving around and the scenary, but David wanted to go back to the camping area for lunch, and then visit Newfound Gap, so we did.

Finally got back to the hotel afterwards, just in time to run into some of the guests. Greg Bishansky, Greg Weisman, Thom Adcox, Jennifer Anderson, and others. I was happy. It was great seeing them again. Thom asked how I'd been, to which I'd answered honestly and truthfully.

ME: S**t.

TA: (grins) S**t?

And we both laughed.

A Fan also showed up and promptly checked in. Obviously, he was our roommate this year.

Took my 1st picture of this year's con, which was of a random attending girl. No reason, purely on a whim. My camera fingers were itching. I went down to the Jacuzzi. God, I love Jacuzzis. After a few minutes of basking in heated-watery bliss, I'd noticed Thom talking to a group nearby, and, after some debating, decided I was too curious to miss out on it, so I got out of the water and joined in. Thom's definitely an interesting talker, that's for sure. Soon, they all headed out to go eat somewhere, with no one inviting me to come. I admit it was a bit depressing, but I wasn't dressed for it anyway, so it made sense. I can live with that. I returned to my room instead, watching a DVD with David and A Fan before going to bed.

Sleep is always good.

FRIDAY, JUNE 22ND, 2007

Enough of the pre-con stuff. THIS was the day of the con, which is the subject of this journal and the purpose for my vacation, so today the convention stuff finally starts.

Woke up, and showered. Daily routine. Nothing unusual there. I paced the hotel, seeking the best view of the mountains. Nice view. I noticed a newspaper article about the con (from Pigeon Forge's local newspaper, the Star Journal) on the con suite door and went down to a nearby gas station to buy a copy. Maybe I'll cut out the article and stick it in a scrapbook or something.

Helped a couple members of the con staff move some comics up to Room 3A too, mainly out of boredom.

More pics at registration, including one or two of Thom. Chatted with him about the 'almost' Lex tattoo that I'd nearly gotten last fall. Found out his birthday. The Voice Acting Panel, which he hosted, was really fun. I'd missed last year's VA Workshop, (My only regret from G2006) so I vowed to go to the panel this year to make up for it. As always, hearing Thom talk was a treat, and I was certainly captivated. He told that 'Snap' story again, and other voice-acting stuff, as well. He's also apparently co-writing a series that he seemed interested in pitching to Adult Swim. I'll have to keep an eye out for it. David and I volunteered to make him a website (since it seems a lot of other VAs have them anyway, and he doesn't), and Thom seemed excited about it. We decided to discuss the details of it later on. Thom even gave us his number so we could run the info by him before building it. And who knew that Thom loved horror movies?!

Radio Play Auditions came next, and they were fun. I went in to read for Brooklyn (my favorite character), and I was a little nervous, at first, but when the judges asked me to re-read the last 3 lines, I decided 'to hell with it', swallowed my fear, and gave them the best Brooklyn I could. They seemed impressed. Greg complimented me for my ability to follow directions, which was pleasent. He asked me if I wanted to go by 'Ed', or 'KingCobra', or what. I told him anything was fine. I left feeling confident that I'd landed the part of Brooklyn, (which I found out later I didn't, but more on that later), but I decided to keep an open mind until I actually saw the cast list the following day.

Although now I feel I have to ask. What was with Thom wearing those pink bunny ears??

Opening Ceremonies. Just as great as usual, but, then, this is only my 2nd con, so what do I know? Other then that I enjoyed it, I mean? News about the 1st issue of 'Bad Guys' which I already knew about to begin with. Music Videos were still as enjoyable as last year's, with Greg B.'s 'I Stand Alone' (by Green Day) ringing in #1 on my list. I also loved 'The Awakening' and 'How Could This Happen'. I should look for them on YouTube or someplace later, b/c I want to see them again.

Afterwards, it was off to the RPG Gaming thing to do nothing but watch...

Once we were bored of that, David and I decided to return to our room for DVDs, but I decided (why, I swear to god that I do not know) to take a different route. While I was on my detour, I ran into a group of people talking to Thom. Surprise, surprise. I stayed to listen to Thom talk, then we headed off. Walked together a little bit, engaged in conversation (about his future site, and movies, and other things. Thom asking me how the Jacuzzi water was.) until we got to his room. I said good-night and kept on going down the same direction to my own room, where I crashed for the night with my DVDs.

To Be Continued.

Spacebabie writes...

Gathering 2nd half

Sunday June 24
After sleeping in we had breakfast at the Red Rooster again. This time I had waffles, and I am like Buffy when it comes to breakfast foods. I had the waffles with peaches and caramel drizzled on top, ah sweet buttery rich caramel, and to drink I had my preciousssss coffee.

After breakfast we went to the creative positioning panel where Mara and Nikki drew some fun and unique poses, while we suggested some poses. A few others, including Silver came up to also add draw in a few positions.

After the panel it was time for the Bad Guys panel. Greg W answered all the questions he was allowed to and we got to see a promotional poster…sweet. Karine said she loved drawing the characters and was really enjoying Yama.

We hung out in the dealer's room while they prepped for the banquet. GregX ducked out and we thought he went to shower and change suits, nope he went to go and join the Order or the Phoenix Gate.

For the second time in a row I dressed up for the banquet in my new red dress and red shoes. I am not a fan of dresses, so I rarely shop for them, but after seeing Revel's reaction to a character in the Britcom Coupling in a red dress I knew I had to get a red one, and after getting pretty I stood in front of the full length mirror and noticed that I had indeed lost some weight since last year.

The banquet was another good one. We had a choice of water or presweetened tea to drink. I like iced tea, but it was a bit too sweet and I needed to water it down a bit, a lot of us watered down our tea. I made certain I had three courses. I had a little salad, and had plenty of veggies in the form of carrots and broccoli, some beef, and a roll for my carbs, and a slice of cake for dessert. There were a lot of questions after word.

There were a lot of great costumes. Hal's stone gargoyle was stellar and I loved Chyna Rose's gargoyle costume, great work with the horns. Flanker was Matt Bluestone and his performance earned him the Thom Adcox award.

We did some dancing after, and maybe it was the sugar from both the tea and the cake, but I was feeling rather energetic and I pulled Revel onto the floor and busted a groove, got jiggy with it, worked it. We had a conga line for David Bowie's Dance Magic Dance, and we nearly crossed the stream.

Dancing ended when we had an emergency, the ceiling in the dealers room started to form leaks and we all rescued the art and the comics.

Monday June 25
Breakfast at the Rooster again. This time chocolate éclair pancakes and coffee.

After breakfast we joined up with Flanker who organized a group to go to a shooting range. This was the first time I have ever held a gun, and I am a daughter of a retired army captain.

I fired off about three rounds and I wasn't too shabby. My first shot was right through the neck of the paper target, there were a few in the head, several in the chest, and he won't be having children.

After we returned we packed up our stuff, gave Gregx the key, hugged and said our farewell and then began the drive back to Nashville. We stopped by Wendy's on the way and we both had nuggets and fries and I tried the new frosty float…yummy.

We were a little worried when we went to check in since a lot of people who were flying in to Houston for their transfer flight had theirs canceled, but since we were taking an express ours was fine. We ran into Winterwolf at check in and since his flight was also delayed we chatted some more in the terminal until we boarded.

Good thing we stopped by Wendy's on the way, cause all we got to munch on was a Gorram thing of peanuts. I read during the flight, but even though I was trying to focus on the flight we heard IT, and by that we mean this bimbo was behind us chatting about going to culinary school, and how her daddy was paying for an expensive trip to Paris and she had that valley girl voice combined with Karen Walker's voice from Will and Grace.

Revel's mom picked us up and we stopped by Jack in the Box for dinner, I had a sirloin burger meal with Swiss cheese and grilled onions, returned home, unpacked checked e-mail, and went to bed.

Spacebabie writes...

Con Journal...first half

Friday: June 22

We both had everything prepared the night before, because we had to get up at 4:30 in the morning. We got dressed packed up everything and went to Revel's mother's place where we left Hyena and she drove us to the airport…basically to save cash by not parking at the airport.

Lines were long at the airport, it was early in the morning and the lines were still long, line to check the bag and the line for the scan, made longer since there was only one scanner, but then they opened up a second one. Weeee. Took the monorail to Terminal B… and boarded the express jet.

Flight did not seem long at all. I dozed through most of it, except for take off, landing in Nashville and when they gave out muffins and beverages, ah precious coffee, come to mama.

On the way to the rental car the strap to my laptop case broke. Jack turned out to be fine. Yeah, different laptop, got it a few months prior since Pippin's backlight went out. I named it after the monkey.

Not long after we got on the road we got a real breakfast at McDonalds where I had another yogurt parfait, and an orange juice. I dozed again until we were a few miles outside of Knoxville. Revel decided to try to take a shortcut, but that took us through downtown Knoxville and through a lot of stops.

After we left the city and suburbs and ended up in the sticks we were getting confused, about where we were going. After several minutes of confusion we came through and into Pigeon Forge, after that it was downhill from there. Saw a lot of go-carts, mini golf courses, pancake houses…and a Wonderworks? (The upside down building) Holy cow, somebody cloned International Drive (Street where the 2000 motel was located), and placed it in Tennessee. We Called GregX for final directions and we called him again when we reached the parking lot.

The first person we run into once again is Greg Weisman, and then we came across GregX and were introduced to the elevators and the stairs. After we got a parking pass and were able to put our stuff into the room Revel and I got our con packets and Revel set up his art and we got caught up with our friends until Revel and Emambu went to the try out for the radio show.

I needed actual cash and Mandi showed me where the nearest ATM was, after I came across some paper I returned to the dealers and bought a Serenity shirt, and then I plopped down and did some drawing until they returned. I pointed out the Serenity shirts to Revel and he bought one.

After a group formed, Hudson took us outside where he could smoke and told us a story. We stayed out until Opening ceremonies.

At opening ceremonies we came across the small problem involving the large screen. Greg W decided to do away with the chairs and we sat down on the floor. Nikki welcomed us to the 2007 Gathering, introduced the staff and handed the focus to Jen who gave the fan of the year award to Karine. The focus went over to Susan Leonard who was speaking for Ellen for the 2008 Gathering in Chicago.

Then Greg W took the spotlight. He explained the sales of the DVD's, comics, mentioned Bad Guys and Pendragon. He asked for the Newbies and to see how many Gatherings people have attended. Poor Aaron had lost count of how many he had attended. Greg explained the history of the series, starting with the original comedy pitch and brought in the goodies, the pitches for Gargoyles, for the spin offs, and The Last. Greg W also broke the podium.

After opening ceremonies a group of us went to find food. GregX, Revel, Winterwolf, Legacy, Fan, Gside and I went to Huck Finn; a restaurant that advertised all you can eat catfish. It also had a store similar to Cracker-barrel. They served drinks in mason jars and every table got complimentary vittals; hush puppies, pickles, onions, and beans. I had the grilled trout.

After dinner we returned to the hotel room where we chatted until we were ready to sleep.

Saturday June 23
We woke up and after a shower we sought out breakfast and went to the Red Rooster Pancake house. Oh sweet lord what they did with pancakes, I had the berrylicious pancakes, so many berries, blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, and strawberries on top of a triple stack with whip cream on top and coffee to drink. I am a zombie without my coffee in the morning.

I came back in time for the figure drawing panel and watched as the models sit and stand in positions while we sketched them.

After the panel I was thirsty, real thirsty. Revel and I went to a soda machine and I tried a vault for the first time, one of those cool bottles lasted for a while. We hung out in the dealers room and I got to meet Silver's fiancé, Jordan…and Holy sweet frip, can the dude draw! He was doing amazing shading details to big warrior brute, not sure if it was an orc, or a troll, or an ogre.

I went to the World Building panel, being that is a writing panel for fantasy and sci-fi writers. There were a lot of details, such as creating different alien races and how they would communicate, read, eat, etc. How their society would be set up, family units, politics, and religion. We also covered the different ways to use magic for fantasy.

Then came the othercon art discussion: Hooray pron, and Hooray Mara showing us how to draw naughty bits, making men and women realistic and how that would transfer over to gargoyles and the Fae, and while the discussion was going on, I was drawing something innocent…yes I solemnly swear I was drawing characters with their clothes still on.

Then it was time for the Radio Play, and just like in 2004 it was a pretty large cast. It was a performance of issues 3, 4 and 5 of the Gargoyles comic. Yeah that is right issue 5 and yes I know what happens, and you have to wait for it to come out in July. All I can say is that Emambu was amazing.

After the play it was time to eat. Another group of us trekked across busy traffic for pizza at Papa Johns. Revel and I split a pepperoni and olive pizza and I claimed the jalapeno. After pizza we played round of mini golf, and there were times when we the golf ball left the green and bounced on the sidewalk.

We had an hour to kill after the game and hung out in our room until it was time for Blue Mug, and it was pretty blue, lots of nice dirty questions, to keep us mulled over. The Blue Mug lasted until about 1:30 when Thom left, and when Thom leaves then everybody leaves.

VKahri writes...

..well.. this being my first convention, I'm now posting my first con journal. I hope I'm doing this right..
First of all it was just a little too ironic and serendipitous that the convention happened to be in the same general location as my WestGate resorts vacation package.. I had been offered this package about two years prior and kept not knowing exactly when I wanted to use it.. The location was chosen but the dates had not been. When I found out about the Gathering being in Pigeon Forge I then knew what dates I'd want to use.
...Although... I really didn't like WestGate at all... blah.. I still had a pretty good time overall.

Thursday June 21.
It took us only 5 hours to drive in from Cincinnati.. I was going on no sleep because I was up all night the night before with severe nausea ~ My vice and my Kryptonite since my gal bladder came out. We checked in at 4, did a little shopping and crashed around 9 or 10pm.

Friday June 22nd.
So this was it..Denny's for breakfast at 10. Then we found the hotel which was about a 15 minute drive [5 if there wasn't any traffic...] from WestGate and got checked in. Then spent a good while just browsing over the dealer's tables and artwork. Very nice. Made me wish I had followed through and posted some art of my own. The opening ceremonies weren't quite what I expected but it was nice. My poor foot fell asleep because we were all on the floor in order to see the TV. I can't figure out how to sit Indian style without that happening. Then my friend had mini golf with Kirin who was sadly unable to attend due to being a mother and all. But mini golf was kinda cool... I actually got to play with them even though I was not signed up because Kirin did not make it.
Greg and Tom's group were finished before us, and I was a little surprised they waited till we got done as well. I didn't actually realise the scores were going to be tallied up for later. I lost. hehe.. our whole group did pretty bad.

Then we walked to Hukk Fin's Catfish Grill.. I had no idea we were doing that afterward I would have saved my appetite.. I wasn't thrilled about the location because I'm not a big sea food fan.. but they had fried shrimp and my personal favorite.. Fried Pickles!! YUM!
AND I got to sit near Greg and Susan so that was totally awesome. It was just cool as hell to be able to hang out with him! watching the show when it first came out was the most important part of my day when I was younger and now over ten years later I got to meet the man responsible. or at least mostly responsible.
And Tom Adcox is such a funny guy to be around. Such a wonderful personality, and very entertaining. He found a funny visor hat in the gift shop in the restaurant and walked over to our end of the table with it. I didn't catch all of what he said but it was some funny stuff. One of those Polaroid moments and my camera never came out of it's bag. It's so cool his voice really does sound like that! I wish I could have hung out with him a little more, maybe for the mug-a-guest but that was happening at the same time as the physiology panel which I surely did not want to miss.

Anywho.. as we walked back to the hotel there were alot of sports cars in a parking lot near the street. I noticed a dodge stealth and drooled.. then.. I noticed a second.. a third..at least 6 total. No one really noticed as I ran to my bud to exclaim all excitedly that there were at least 6 dodge stealth's sitting within 5 feet of each other. They went into the hotel. we got in my car and went back to our cabin and crashed.

Saturday June 23'rd.
Today we got up around 10 or 11 and went to Red Rooster for MORE pancakes. Afterwards we headed to the hotel and again went upstairs to the dealer's room and art show. There was more artwork to see this time. Then it was time for Mug-a-Guest with Greg. That was interesting but there were alot of questions I either didn't ask or forgot to ask. I missed out on the Radio play casting and rehearsals and the Radio play itself which was a huge bummer.. I didn't even know what it was otherwise I would have tried to be there for that. We left for a few hours and visited Cades Cove which was about an hour away.. it was a waist of time and gas. It wasn't what we expected though it was kinda pretty.
We came back in time for the Blue Mug deal which was certainly interesting if not entertaining. Then my stupid stomach started flaring up again so we didn't get to stay for the whole thing. We needed to get to sleep anyway.

Sunday June 24th.
Today started with a mandatory 90 minute spiel and tour at the WestGate which I was not interested in but if I didn't go I'd be hit with a $100 charge for every night I was there. When they showed me the 1 bedrooms that timeshare owners got I was thoroughly pissed. So much nicer than the crap hole we got at the top of the hill.. And it caused us to miss out on the open story reading.
so.. we got to the hotel in time for the physiology panel and hung around for the Bad Guy's panel after that. Then there was some time to kill before the banquet. Greg was downstairs talking to a fellow in the lobby. I sat down on the couch across from them hoping for a chance to share some thoughts and ideas I had as well as other questions I had either forgotten to ask or was too self conscious to ask. But it seemed to be a bit of an important discussion between him and the other guy so I just sat back and half listened half meditated on things. There's always next year lol.
Then it was time for the banquet. I was impressed the food was good. The mashed potatoes were the best! When we arrived most of the tables were taken. My friend and I sat down at one that was all empty near the front of the room. Some cool people sat with us, including Lynati. I was happy to meet her finally I'v seen some of her things on deviantart. Luck was on our side in a way, they decided to do a table at a time for the buffet and our table was first to go following Greg, Tom and the staff. I'm still kind of surprised that one of the front tables was empty.. I'd have thought most people would want to be up close to where Greg was so they could hear better. I guess most of them figured being closer to the buffet would grant them a better spot in line HAHAHA!

I left the banquet Q&A a little early to get my camera's battery charger and Nik's Laptop. Nik would be my friend but I'm tired of saying 'my friend' all of the time. Got back in time for the Masquerade wishing like mad I had been able to make the costume I thought about making...well maybe next year. There were some great costumes, got some pictures. They handed out awards for the best costumes in different categories then played music for the ball. At this point I was getting very detached from it all and started to feel some anxiety and depression setting in. I took Nik's laptop back to the car and returned not sure what I would do next.. A trip to the bathroom to get away from the crowd for a bit seemed like a good plan. Nik wasn't having any trouble hanging out with all the new people anyway.
So I went and found someones phone in there. Kirin happened to be in there as well but she sat down on the bench to give Samuel a little meal of his own before exiting so a conversation began between us. I had finished washing my hands and she asked if this was my first convention. The lost phone was gonna be stuck on the sink before returning to it's owner for a while lol.
And what a blessing it turned out to be.. It just seemed ironic that the timing happened the way it did, I wasn't in the best shape when I entered the bathroom. I felt much better when I left. We talked about artwork, her artwork, her plans, what she was doing and had been doing and will be doing.. I talked about some of my art blocks and troubles and belly aching and she shared some advice and thoughts on the matter. And Samuel was so well behaved through it all just suckling away. Then Niki/Y2Hecate entered asking about a phone and my hand went up before she could completely get the words out. So the phone found it's owner lol. Then we left and I met back up with Nik and we caught up on things and returned to our little crappy cabin for another nights sleep.

Monday June 25th.
This was our check out day for WestGate and I was happy to leave. I dropped Nik off at the hotel while I went down the street to check in at Shular Inn for one night. I unloaded some stuff, fixed my hair, stopped at Walgreens for some sweet vitamin water and a zebra cake then met up with Nik at the convention in time for the closing ceremonies. I had this idea to write down the websites on my con shirt with a sharpie.. I could only remember the Gathering site so I put that one on the front near the bottom. I don't know if Greg noticed it or not.
After the Closing announcements, they decided on doing Lazertag since Dollywood was rained out. I got Greg to sign the back of my shirt which was cool. I'm still kicking myself for having forgotten my DVD's. I even picked them up while packing then put them down because all the episodes are on Nik's laptop so I didn't think I'd need them. I'm such a dumba**!
Then we went to lazertag.. I was hoping to be in Greg's group but he got sucked into another game of air hockey. I wanted to ask him to play but I heard him complaining about his shoulder so I figured it would be an instant no, or just a bad idea anyway.. then later he started playing with someone else and I felt silly for having passed up the idea. It was time for our team to play anyway though.
Bot what a grungy nasty sweaty moldy old locker room smell that was back there.
.. we eventually started playing and I wasn't doing so grate at first. Then I found one of the sniper points and started to really have a blast. I so enjoy catching people off guard and being able to duck down where they can't get me too easily. It was loads of fun and as it turned out I was first place. ...some might call that cheating but.. what can I say.. I like being the sniper type.. close range combat was never my style when it came to lazertag. *shrug*..
After that they all decided to go walk down the street ..for ice cream I thought.. We decided to say our goodbyes and Greg gave us both a hug which surprised me but it was really cool. Very nice man!!!
We drove around for at least 45 minutes looking for a place to eat.. we saw the group walking lol.. We settled on Ruby Tuesdays and I got more shrimp and no cocktail sauce! They decided to stop carrying it.. what a crock. As we left to return to the entertainment and gift shops we again saw the group walking this time back to the hotel. It was just kinda funny. We did some go carts and some browsing and we did this mining thing which was really cool. Then we went to the hotel and crashed.

Tuesday June 26'th. We were late checking out but we had a great time.. we were even later getting on the road we wanted to go horse back riding but we got rained out. We ate at Denny's again and did some last minute shopping. I got a nice cool new katana and some great shirts for my parents who thoroughly enjoyed them. We got on the road finally around 5 and made it home by around 9:30.
We reminisced about the convention on the way back and I asked Nik if anyone asked him about me or said anything about me. he asked me what I meant and I said about my 'intense expression'.. Yes I do get pestered about this sort of thing all the time so I tend to ask him about it when around new people. The responses tend to amuse or interest me.

Apparently Greg had mentioned it so I was wishing I could have been a fly on the wall for that one. ..and apparently when people say I look intense.. they mean I look mad or mean.. but that's also no surprise to me as I get it all the time. *shrugs*
There is a reason for it..there are several. I am aware of them.. But that's a rant for another time.

I enjoyed the Gathering and look forward to next year.. now if someone could just please invent a miracle potion beyond the strength and effectiveness of Pepto and Emetrol so I could enjoy an evening sans-stomach upsets.. I'd be ever so grateful ;)-

http://www.VKahri.Deviantart.Com

Idgiebay writes...

Here's part one of five from my con journal. Unfortunately, this part doesn't contain anything about the con itself since it takes place the day before, but I thought I'd post it anyway. After all, if the con wasn't happening, none of this would have happened, either!

WEDNESDAY/THURSDAY - June 20th-21st

Our trip actually began late Wednesday night, as it was cheaper than flying out on Thursday. Nothing all that significant happened, other than me being absolutely terrified of the plane, but once I was on it an in the air, everything was fine.

We arrived in Chicago, IL at about 5:37 Thursday morning in concourse C. Our next flight was in concourse F. Oh my god, I cannot tell you how far we walked--concourse F was, literally, on the other side of the airport. They had a shuttle that would take you there, so we walked all the way down to the shuttle station (which was in the opposite direction of concourse F) only to find that it was closed for the day, so we trekked to our destination on foot. The airport was beautiful, but I was too frustrated and exhausted to enjoy it. They had an old army plane on display (I don't recall what war it was from, unfortunately) and a huge, life-size model of a brachiosaurus skeleton.

After we finally got to the gate and had a few moments to recoup, we then boarded the tiniest plane we had ever been on thus far. It was a little Embraer RJ145. The seating layout went accordingly: one seat by the window on the left, then the aisle, and then two more seats on the right. That was it. I'm not sure what the maximum capacity of the plane was, but it couldn't have been much. It wasn't even a full flight, so I was seated by myself on the left while Tif got the two seats on the right all to herself. The flight was smooth and about an hour and a half later, we arrived at McGhee Tyson airport in Knoxville, TN.

We went to collect our luggage. Tif's came out fairly soon, but I had to wait.

And wait.

And wait, until I finally accepted the fact that my luggage would not be coming down. Apparently, it was still in Chicago, so I gave the United Express clerk the address to the Grand Resort hotel and he said the next flight from Chicago would be at 1:30 and my luggage SHOULD be on that one. Thank you, United. This was the first of a few stupid things you did and I will never fly your airline again, but more on that later.

Tif got our rental car that she was legally supposed to be driving since I'm not 25 yet, so shhh... It was a little, red Chevy Cobalt that had a broken seat, which was really annoying. I wanted to bring the back forward, but the lever on the side did nothing. I spent most of my driving time leaning forward slightly. It wasn't good for my neck.

There was a little mishap on the way to the hotel since the directions we had told us to make a left when we actually should have made a right, but my awesome sense of direction got us going the right way!

By the way, that awesome sense of direction? It must have randomly developed without me noticing, because I used to describe myself as directionally challenged. Seriously. North, south, east, and west meant nothing to me, but somehow, I always know which way I'm going lately. It's neat!

Okay, sorry. Boring little tanget over.

I don't know what time we got to the hotel, because by that time, I was practically sleeping with my eyes open. A very unpleasant woman who didn't know how to smile checked us in, over-charged us a couple of nights, and even charged us for an EXTRA night. More on that later, though. We didn't realize she had booked us an extra day until Friday and we weren't going to do anything about the over-charging until we talked to a few more con-goers. The room rate was supposed to be $59.77 per night, but we were charged $69.77 for Saturday and Sunday. We had asked the lady why we were charged more and she told us weekend nights were always extra, even with the discounted group rate. Whatever.

So we got to the room and were ready to pass out, but we knew we had to eat first. There was a restaurant next to the hotel called Red Rooster's Pancake House, one pancake house out of about 30 on the same street. I kid you not. Pigeon Forge loves their pancakes, mini golf, and tattoo parlors.

I had a (VERY YUMMY) breakfast burrito, Tif had a veggie omelet, and with full bellies, we meandered back to the hotel room and died.

I was awoken by my cell phone ringing. A man named Pete wanted to know what type of location I was at so he could drop off my luggage and said he'd be there in about an hour. Passed out, woke up again because Tif's mom had arrived at the hotel and Tif needed to help her check in (her mom and Allen stayed one night in Pigeon Forge before moving on to Gatlinburg the next day), fell back to sleep and was woken up a final time by the hotel staff letting me know my luggage had arrived. I waited around for Tif, but she hadn't yet returned, so I putted around the hotel room a bit. The bathroom was hideous. Light orange walls and a blue shower, what the hell.

After Tif got back, we retrieved my luggage and were awake enough to appreciate the beautiful view we had from the hotel balcony. We were right over a gorgeous, little creek that had all sorts of wild life, like Muscovy ducks, mallards, geese, cardinals, and squirrels. Some Canadian Geese even dropped by!

We visited with Tif's mom for a bit then got ready for... *dun dun dun* THE GHOST WALK OF GATLINBURG.

It didn't take long to drive into Gatlinburg. We got there at about 8pm. We had initially planned on eating first, but my feet were killing me, so my first Large Purchase of the trip was a new pair of shoes. They're cute, I think. Brown... they sort of look business-like, but the soles have a good grip, which is what I felt I needed since we were going to be walking so much. The man who ran the store even gave me a pair of socks, since the ones I had were too thin and causing the shoes to slip off my ankle. After that, we decided we wouldn't have enough time for dinner and would eat after the tour, so we wandered around the Village Shops for a while. I bought a magnet that has the Berry coat of arms on it from a shop that specializes in Celtic merchandise. We grabbed a couple smoothies from a coffee shop and then headed up to the cemetery for our tour at 9pm.

It was a LOT of fun. Our tour guide was an excellent storyteller. It's hard to describe the way he was dressed, so instead of trying, here's a pic: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v177/idgiebay/Misc/DSC00533.jpg

To start off, he had us go into the cemetery and take pictures. Hopefully, Tif will be posting some of those soon and I'll actually be posting some footage I took, but that probably won't be for a few days. I have work tomorrow, after all, and I first need to finalize all of my discs.

The tour consisted of our guide telling us real stories of murders and accidental deaths and then following up with tales of hauntings in the locations they took place. Everywhere we stopped, he gave us a chance to take photos and, hopefully, catch some "paranormal activity" on film. It would take a while to type up all of the stories he told us... Maybe I'll type them up later or maybe Tif will, but the footage I'll be uploading should contain the majority of them. Though, they may be choppy. I wasn't continuously filming the whole time he was talking.

Let's see, what else... The tour ended at about 10:15 or 10:20 and, by that time, Tif and I were starving. Oh lord, that was an adventure on it's own.

Gatlinburg, despite being a tourist town, apparently SHUTS DOWN between 10 and 10:30. We literally walked the streets for half an hour, trying to find some place to eat, but everything, even the HARD ROCK CAFE, for goodness sake, was CLOSED. By this point, I was getting very frustrated. My knees were hurting (I still have no idea why--I could hardly walk for a couple days, and then the pain suddenly went away), my feet were becoming blistered from the new shoes, I was still tired, and my stomach was trying to eat itself. Eventually, we got that hint that we weren't going to find anything, so we drove back to Pigeon Forge and stopped at the first restaurant we found, which--surprisingly--WASN'T a pancake house. It was Shoney's, of which there are three on the main Pigeon Forge road.

The service there was all right... We ended up with a trainee waitress who didn't understand English very well. I think she may have been German or French, I'm not sure. She was a sweetie, but it was difficult to communicate what I wanted. I had ordered chicken tenders with onion rings and had ended up with questionable-looking charbroiled chicken. Even though I didn't like it, I didn't send it back, though I probably should have. I didn't want her to get in trouble or anything.

So finally, we went back to the hotel. I can't remember now if we stopped by Tif's mom's room again or not. I was so tired. I do know that we looked at the pictures Tif took and watched my footage. I think we passed out shortly after that.

TO BE CONTINUED IN:
Friday: The Real Fun Begins

Gorebash writes...

11th Annual Gathering of the Gargoyles
Pigeon Forge, Tennessee
June 22-25, 2007

Thursday, June 22

I decided to drive down to the con. Why not? Left at 5 AM with my trust GPS/satellite navigation system guiding me all the way. The trip would be 92miles and take about 16 hours. It was long. There were lots of 18-wheelers. Lots. But the trip itself was uneventful. I got in around 9 PM. I ran into Karine in the lobby who helped me get my key. I'd be rooming with her and Jen this year. Karine then took off for the staff dinner while I got settled in. Talked to Hudson, Greg B, Dancer, Jeb, and a few others. Jen, Karine, and her 4 month old son Samuel showed up at the room and we hung out. Greg stopped by at one point to see if the wireless internet connection was any better in our room from his. Nope. He took off for the lobby to get some work done.

Friday, June 23

Grabbed breakfast with Jen, Karine and Sam at the hotel's buffet. Biscuits and gravy. For breakfast? I just don't know. I went for the more traditional pancakes and eggs. Karine had an art tips panel so I followed along. Perspective and reference. I'd read Karine's article on perspective, but it was nice to see it demonstrated live. After the panel I hung out at the registration table, checked out the dealer tables and the art show. One dealer was selling these knitted/crochet gargoyle dolls that were easily the hit of the show. A couple pages from issue #5 (without dialogue) were on display, with a sneak peek at Brooklyn's costume. Very cool. And very not what you'd think the costume would be given the theme seen in earlier issues. Seth and Sammy showed up and we talked for a bit.

The radio play auditions started up and I was right there. A group of us stood in the stairwell outside the audition room trying to guess what the play would be this year. It'd be a large cast with 40 parts, each paired to make it a minimum of 20 actors needed for the play. The bottom of the audition sheet lists out 2 or 3 letter abbreviations for each part making it possible to pick up on the characters that appear in the play. I spotted both the clones and Xanatos were in this one and figured it had to be an adaptation of the current story arc (issues 3,4 and 5). The audition itself was very cool. I picked Angela to read for because she's the only dialogue I've yet to read from for the auditions. I then demonstrated my perfect Scottish accent to great applause and praise from all. My heart wasn't in the dog bark this year. I'd love to know how the hell Frank Welker makes the sounds he can.

Opening ceremonies were what we've come to expect. It's still just as much fun as it was in 1997. Greg mentioned that he's got a new contact at Buena Vista Home Entertainment and is starting to talk with him about releasing volume 2 of the DVD. Here's hoping. The Team Atlantis episode "The Last" was shown with a ton of new updates. It looks very cool. Vashkoda has done a great job putting that together.

A bunch of us went out for dinner at this place across the street that specialized in catfish. Drinks were served in mason jars and we had beans and hush puppies while we figured out what to eat. I grabbed a steak. Someone ordered aligator tail and that went around the table. Tasted a bit like tunafish. A man was going around playing songs on his guitar. Jen knew EVERY SINGLE ONE. After we walked the strip for a bit and headed back.

Saturday, June 24

Breakfast again. Karine had another panel on going from fan to pro (she's the artist on issue #5 and the Bad Guys mini series). One things got started the panel went pretty strong. Lots of people showed up. The radio play cast was announced and I was on it.

At the play rehearsals it was announced the play was an adaptation of issues 3, 4 and 5 of the comic. We'd all get to see what happens in issue 5 before the rest of the world. Sweet! 37 people were cast making up what must be the largest radio play cast we've ever had. I was cast as Martin Hacker. Mike, sitting next to me, was cast as Quincy (the waiter with the Illuminati ring). As my lines were from issue 3 and his were from issue 4 on we were paired to share a script.

The play was a hit. The whole cast did an amazing job. Lots of really good performances. I can't wait to see it up on YouTube. The story was full of big revelations and an ending that I loved, but really hated, but really loved, because I knew it could only mean a ton of problems and complications for the Manhattan clan in issues to come. This one issue every two months deal is just torture.

A group of us (Jen, Seth, Sammy, Karine, Rebecca, Tony, Andrea, and myself) walked the strip looking for a tattoo artist. There'd been rumors of a plan for a bunch of us to get ink. I'd been looking for an excuse to get ink and tagged along. Once actually in the shop I started feeling a bit nervous about the whole idea. We eventually decided to wait since there wouldn't have been enough time to ink us all. Jen wouldn't leave without having something done to her body and despite my offers she chose to get her nose pierced.

We had dinner at another restaurant across the street. It had a Boston theme and dealed mostly in seafood. I had steak. Again. It wasn't the greatest prime rib I've had, but it was food and I was hungry.

The blue mug was blue. Raunchy, but not all the time. Thom Adcox dropped his pants. Again. Then again. By 2am we were all really tired and headed back.

Sunday, June 25

Those who were looking to get inked the previous day met up for breakfast. We all figured we could skip the opening panels (although we had to be back for the Bad Guys panel at 2 PM) so, after breakfast, we went back across the street to the tattoo shop we'd visited. This time there was no turning back. The tattoo artist, Phil, would give us a group deal. The tattoo would be of the phoenix gate, about 2.5-3 square inches in size and in color for the low low price of $100. The clever businessman that he is, Phil had us pay up front. No more chickening out now, we'd paid, it was going to happen. Jen went first getting it on her lower back. Andrea followed suit. Then Seth on his upper left arm. Now I was in the hot seat. I got mine on the upper right arm. It's my first tattoo. Does it hurt? Hell yes. Someone describe it, and it makes perfect sense to me, that it feels like someone cutting through your skin with a razor blade. Despite this, not a single scream, nor tear, was shed. In fact nobody who went screamed or teared up. Thom Adcox showed up with a few others. After mine was done we left Tony, Thom and company to get theirs while we headed off to the Bad Guys panel.

The Bad Guys panel was more about how to promote the show than anything. Greg's got an out for his stories now and he's reluctant to reveal new details. Jen showed her ink to Greg and Greg shared his opinion on Jen's mental state. After the panel we headed back to the tattoo shop. We'd forgotten the tip, oops. We also had Greg and Thom sign a copy of the season 2, volume 1 DVD and gave it to him. Tony had gotten his on his upper right arm. Crimson Obsession has gotten one on her lower back, and Thom Adcox was in the chair getting his on his calf when we walked in. Greg B came over with us and stuck around to get one on his upper right arm as well.

We left and got read for the banquet. This year's banquet was a buffet style affair. The food was really, really good. And I was, unexpectedly, introduced to sweet tea. I think the ratio of sweet to tea was about 95 to 1. After the banquet we hung out for a bit while preparations were made for the masquerade.

This year's masquerade was heavy on original characters and light on canon characters. I'm thinking I need to get back in the game. Hal's costume as a stone gargoyle was awesome. Easily best in show. Thing broke down into dancing and partying after that. I left after a little bit to check in on home and make sure everything was okay. I sat down in the lobby because it was the only (mostly) reliable place to get the wireless internet. At some point Hudson and a few others come rushing through. The rain that night was heavy and apparently the roof was starting to leak.. right over the comic book dealer's table. We headed up and started rearranging furniture and moving comic boxes to try and keep them dry. It seemed at every spot we thought dry enough to put the books we'd find a small leak in the ceiling. Eventually we just stacked tables and stuck the boxes under the tables. The following day I found out the books came through the night dry and fine.

Headed back to the room where everyone had piled in to hang out. Introduced Greg to *things* on YouTube. Had some booze. Eventually fell asleep.

Monday, June 26

Packed up. We were all leaving today. Had breakfast once more. After breakfast a bunch of us headed to the live auction. Lots of cool stuff up for auction. I managed to grab a large, metalic looking poster of Coldstone holding Goliath over his head. You've seen a smaller version of this on the cover of the "Brothers Betrayed" VHS tape. Greg and Thom signed it to continue my tradition of having at least 1 signed souvenir from each con I've attended. As the auction was winding down Jen, Karine and I decided it was time to go. We said our goodbyes and went back to the room to get our stuff.

Thom, Karine, Jen and Patrick piled into a car for the drive back to the airport. I said my last goodbyes to them then got in my own car and headed home. 17 hours. 926 miles. And I got lost in downtown Newark because of the late night construction they're doing on the highways. The way down to the con I went I-287, over the Tappan Zee bridge and around New York City. I went through the city on my way home. Paid nearly 1000% more in tolls (not overstating that!) and nearly got lost again in the Bronx, but I finally got home around 3 AM.

Lasting memories: Ink, boobs, Samuel giggling, first rule: don't talk about ...., and THE MAJOR REVELATIONS OF ISSUE FIVE THAT I AM SWORN TO NOT TALK ABOUT. Although I'm dying here. I need to talk!

I had a great time.

Carter writes...

Gathering 2007 Journal

--Friday--
As it so happened, I woke up a good hour and a half later than I had hoped to - or, more precisely, I woke up to the alarm and proceeded to turn it off so that I could sleep for an additional hour and a half - and so was not in the best of moods as I made my way out the door.

While I still left early enough to avoid significant traffic leaving D.C., the trucks were out in force on I-81, as were the state and local police. Honestly, in the years that I traveled 81 in order to get to and from school, I have never seen the kind of police presence as I did going to Pigeon Forge. Neither, it seemed, had many of the travelers, and this led to a problem: The left lane was going painfully slow so as to avoid receiving a ticket, while the right lane had taken up a "Damn the torpedoes!" mentality. I, wanting to neither take 10 hours to get to Pigeon Forge nor 30 seconds to get a court date 350 miles from home (been there, done that) navigated between the two lanes as best I could.

Tennessee, however, was an entirely different story. Traffic became nonexistent and moved along speedily, that is until I made the turn to get to Pigeon Forge. Having varied between 65 and 75 miles per hour for most of the trip, I was not happy to find myself in a miles-long traffic crawl that moved along at under 20 miles per hour, despite the much higher posted speed limit.

In all, it was an eight hour trek down, not including the very quick stop for gas at a station adjacent to a fireworks stand.

I walked into the lobby and saw none other than Greg W. himself, and were it not for this encounter I would have probably wandered aimlessly around the hotel looking for the registration desk - one of those significant things that I failed to do on Thursday was get Leo's cell phone number.

Once I got upstairs and registered, I made my way over to familiar faces and chatted with many people, among them Revel, Spacie, Mandi, Greg B., Gside, and Jade Griffin. The conversation was brief, however, as I then went on a quest to find my roommates, Leo, Kelly, and D. Taina.

The quest was unsuccessful, so instead I got in line to audition for the Radio Play and met up with even more people. It was while waiting in this line, however, that Leo, Kelly, and Taina found me, and who brought in tow Rob and Doppleganger.

I was next to last to audition, but not before I met Kathy, and after which time I finally got to the room and briefly put my feet up to watch "Army of Darkness" before heading over to Opening Ceremonies.

Opening Ceremonies was the usual stuff, with the exception that we had to sit on the floor in order to be able to see the television in the conference room, and further excepting that, as Greg talked about the need to bring more people to the Gathering, a very bright light went on in my head to signal that, as "advertisement guy" for Gathering 2008, that task would be in very large part up to me.

Come to the Gathering in 2008! It's Chicago, it's Gargoyles, it's friends, and it's my self-esteem at stake!

I'm still working on taglines.

After Opening Ceremonies were finished, I introduced myself to Susan, co-chair for next year's Gathering (in Chicago!) and we briefly discussed plans before she was overwhelmed by other people. Afterwards my roommates, Doppleganger, Kathy and I discussed our dinner options, and we settled on Huck Finn's Catfish - as would several other congoers, we would learn. No, I did not violate my rule of not eating seafood when more than 200 miles from a shoreline or major tributary, I had the chicken fried chicken, as opposed to the chicken fried steak, which three of the other five had.

But one thing that never changes from one Gathering to the next is that I always end up sleeping on the floor, and after a long day of driving, I must say that the floor of our room was quite comfortable</lie>.

--Saturday--
Well rested, my roommates and I woke up and headed off to breakfast. We settled for the Red Rooster Pancake House, where we encountered Kathy, John, Sarah, and Mike. Actually, we didn't encounter them, John had to throw a wad of paper at me to get my attention; and when that failed, he got up from his chair, came over to our table and proceeded to "fire" us as friends.

On firing, he mentioned that his group was headed over to a firing range and asked if we wanted to come. I don't know what possessed him to invite a bunch of people who were too tired to notice good friends sitting at a nearby table to go off and fire guns, but we agreed to go all the same.

We had fun to say the least, and our lack of sleep had no ill effects on our health.

From there we all branched off to do our own things, and I headed up to the art show/dealer's room to look at the pretty things and talk with more people. I also learned in this time that I had been cast in the Radio Play, as had apparently half of the Gathering-goers.

I am sworn to secrecy on the specifics of the Radio Play, but let me say in no uncertain terms that it is a must - a MUST - that you go buy Gargoyles #5; and if you haven't already, get Gargoyles #3 and #4 as well. The story is fantastic and a half.

And a half, people.

After that entertainment, Garrett, who I had met earlier in the dealer's room, informed me that a group was getting together for pizza and mini golf. In the last few weeks I have had my mini golf efforts thwarted time and time again, so this was not an opportunity I planned to miss!

My roommates, however, weren't too enthusiastic about the affair, as they had already had it in mind to order pizza, so I went across the street to Papa Johns with Revel, Spacie, Greg B., Aaron, Gside, Mike, and… I'm trying so desperately to remember his name, but I'm failing horribly. My apologies.

I had leftover pizza, so I went back to the hotel room and tried once more to rally my roommates around mini golf, and this time Kelly and Leo decided to attend, while D. Taina and Doppleganger (roommate de facto at this point) decided to stay behind. And so our teams were formed, and off we went, although Doppleganger and D. Taina would eventually join us.

I think there was a reason fate had conspired so many times to keep me from playing mini golf: I suck. After 27 holes, which had a combined par of 69, I took third place of our group of four - me, Kelly, Leo, and Garrett - with a score of 97. My reasoning for this is that I "beat" my local mini golf course back in high school, and not having returned since, I am woefully out of practice.

Yes, woefully out of practice.

The reason we cut our second game short by nine holes was so that we could be back to the hotel for the Blue Mug, the "anything goes" Q&A. I was pretty well zoned out for most of it, so when the panel adjourned at 1:30 a.m., despite Greg's insistence that we could stick around for another half hour, I was more than ready to get back to my cozy floor space.

--Sunday--
I slept well past the alarm in order to be as rested as possible for my long drive home, the price for doing so being the foregoing of breakfast. I packed up my things and then headed over to Jade Griffin's writing/reading panel, for which I had completely forgotten to write anything.

Following this panel was the science & culture panel, hosted by Greg, Jade, and Lynati, and which was by far one of the better panels I have attended in all my Gatherings. The discussion was intelligent, informative, civil, and very enjoyable.

Immediately following the panel, however, I had to hurry through my goodbyes in order to get onto the road and home. Given the nature of the drive down, I did not want to risk getting home too late so as to be too tired to go to work on Monday.

That didn't work out too well.

While I managed to get through Tennessee without much incident, after I crossed over into Virginia, the skies began to open up. I pulled over for dinner at Outback Steakhouse and to let the storm pass, adding much time to my journey (but giving me some delicious, heart attack-inducing leftovers).

Storms aside, I managed to get home at about 10:30 p.m., at which point I had little left to do but crawl into bed (yay, no more floors!), forget to set my alarm, and go to sleep.

--Monday--
Having forgotten to set my alarm, I woke up 15 minutes before I had to leave to get to work. The easy going pace of the Smokey Mountains was as removed from me mentally as physically, and with added urgency I began my daily routine.

I still managed to get out of the house on time, but it was all for naught, as the train I got on ended up breaking down, resulting in me arriving at work 30 minutes late. And as I sorted through the 121 e-mails which had piled up since Thursday afternoon, I knew I was back home.

This year's Gathering was fantastic, and my hat's off to the staff for getting it together. I apologize to all the people who I didn't get the chance to say goodbye to in my rush to get home. Hopefully I will get to see you in Chicago in 2008 so that you can tell me in person just how much I hurt your feelings.

Samson2197 writes...

Why do Gargoyles only lay eggs once every twenty years?

Grey Wolf writes...

First off, I'd like to thank you for including strong female characters in Gargoyles. To this day, there aren't enough out there in cartoons/anime or comics/manga. It's expecialy pleasing to me because, being female, I've had to fight off the 'weaker gender' stereotype all my life! In martial arts class, a boy refused to 'contact spar' with me when our master told us to. Why? Because he'd "Never hit a girl and wasn't going to start now." Him being my friend, that stung a bit; but him being my friend was also what kept me from kicking him through the wall. Characters like Elisa, Angela and Demona made Maggie the Cat tollerable. Which, by the way, is the subject of my post.

I neither love nor hate Maggie. I suppose I sort of like her though, at least she's not exactly a coward. But she irritates me a little, she refuses to fight even though she can, she's easily frightened, she didn't react well to the gargoyles after they saved her, ect. I don't really know what Talon sees in her. Maybe you could tell me? And I have a couple more questions.

1. Does Maggie accept her Mutate form by the time of 'Masque'? She seems okay, but I'm not sure.
2. Do the Mutates have tails or not? Comics #3 and #4 have conflicting art. Are their tails retractable?

brooklyn the red one writes...

hi greg,what would have to happen at this years gathering of the gargoyles to get
the show back on air and even maybe even get the movie started. i ask this becuse
i herd some where that this years gathering was being called bring back the gargoyles or was i wrong

thank you for your time

Thoth writes...

What date does Gargoyles #5 come out? Will it be available at the Gathering?

Laura writes...

What happens when or if an of-age female gargoyle does not mate during the breeding season? Does she lay an unfertilized egg, or cycle more like humans do, or something else entirely? And if something else, what?

Thanks!

Anonymous writes...

First off, I'd like to mention how much my family likes Gargoyles. I've probebly developed a slight obsession; my brother claims he doesn't like it, but I've caught him in a zombie-like trance staring at the TV when the dvd is in (complete with a gaping mouth); my mom likes watching it with me, and says it has better story lines than some of the shows she watches. My dad on the other hand.... at the time of typing, I haven't convinced him to watch it (I will though, just wait), but he's taking me to the 2007 Gathering. Our discusion went something like this:
Dad: So you want me to drive hours, in a car, to a place you've never even heard of, to spend a weekend at a convention about an old Disney cartoon?
Me: Yes.... please.
Dad: Sure!

Yeah... I'll have real questions in further posts.

Phoenician writes...

So here I am with my first Post since getting the first comic, Clan Building, Chapter I. After several months, I now have Chapter II: The Journey, and I'm happy to see the regardless the wait, the story continues!!

I love this part of "The Journey" probably for its great lines, particularly Goliath's "Honestly, I was never quite sure," when talking about Vinnie and Macbeth's "Madam, they BURNED witches like you in the Middle Ages!!" (I can still here John Rhys-Davies' outburst quite clear even though I haven't seen that episode on TV in a good year. If Season II: Volume II ever comes out on DVD, I'd love that episode to be a bonus feature . . . just to hear that outburst.

Great to see Margot Yale again as well!

I also love the little treats that you've included in the issue, particularly Xanatos & Owen's conversation about Mr. Duval. LOVE Xanatos' reply to Owen, and I LOVE how Owen takes it in stride -- can't wait to see him turn into Puck one day, should he get the chance to teach Alex another lesson!

And I've mentioned this in the Comment Room, but I love how Hudson had the subtle honor of "turning on" Chapter II and then he also gets to "turned it off" as well. Still feels like a TV show twelve years later!!

That's basically it, Greg. I can't wait for Chapter III and I also can't wait for the destined release of Season II: Volume II (We've got this far, its not going to end now!)

Cross your fingers that I'll have been able to go to a Gathering by the time you read this!

Makhasu writes...

Now that Demona turns to human during the day, does she get her period every month? If so, how does she feel about it? >=)

Elana writes...

Dear Greg,

When people ask me why I proclaim that Gargoyles stands apart from other shows, I find it difficult to explain. The characters are great, the relationships are great, and overall it's just... great. But that hardly expresses its true charm.

In watching Gargoyles, I find that its appeal must come from its captivating and immersive mythos, the sense one gets of being transported to another, mystical world. Aside from that sense of awe and wonder, there's also that feeling one gets of really being a part of that world, and having an intimate understanding of it. It's like, even if a topic matter hasn't been thoroughly explored within the episodes, or blatantly described, one can derive how every little thing might be prone to work within the world of the Gargoyles.

Anyway (now that I'm done gushing), in light of all this, did you expect Gargoyles to affect and alter the lives of so many people in the way that it did? Objectively, it was only meant as a show for children, but somehow it's managed to capture and touch the lives of all kinds of people. Could you possibly have expected this? For many people, Gargoyles is more than just an interest or a "hobby." How does it make you feel to know that Gargoyles has nearly been a life-changing experience for so many people?

~Elana

Abbie writes...

Hi Greg! My dad and mom gave me my dream come true! I'm going to the gathering of the Gargoyles and i'm in the Story, Fanart, and te-shirt contests! I'm only 13 but i'm really exited! I wanted to know about what your looking for in a teashirt to give ideas for the contest! I love the show more than any other and own both DVDs! I can't wait to meet you!
See you there! From your number one fan!

Cal writes...

Dear Mr. Weisman, My name is Cal and I have been a fan of "Gargoyles" for quite some time. I just recently learned about the annual Gathering Conventions and would like to attend. I'm a little new to this convention stuff however and would like some details. I wanted to email you this question but couldn't get an address. I would really appreciate it if you emailed me at cbraman86@comcast.net. I just need some details i.e. what the convention entails and cost factors. Hope you get this and I hope to hear from you soon.

Cal

Tyler writes...

I was justwondering what are some of gargoyles sex moves?

Alex writes...

Greg,
I've been watching Gargoyles since I was very young (I'm 14 now) and I've only just started wanting to be a serious fan.
So I have three simple Questions:

1.When and where will the next Gathering will be?
2.Do you need to be a specific age to be there?
3.What I should do to prepare for it?

-Alex
"It's alive...ALIVE! I've always wanted to say that."-Xanatos

Nikki "Y2Hecate" Owens writes...

Gathering 2005

Unfortunately, with school and family madness, I've not had time to write up an actual con journal (yet). But, I did want to say a few things about it.

The 8th Gathering Of The Gargoyles, was actually my 4th Gathering. It was a wonderful experience, as always. The staff did a great job, and I thank them for all their hard work.
Traveling to Canada was a new and exciting experience for me. I'm glad I got the chance.
The Gathering itself is always fun for me, and this year was no exception. But here's some of my personal highlights.
The banquet was delicious. I was a little worried that I wouldn't like it, as I'm a very picky eater, but I'm glad I tried it.
The art show was amazing. So many talented artists! Seeing all the great pieces and the work put into them really encourages me to improve my own art.
Lots of interesting panels, as usual. I only wish I had the time to attend more of them. Radio Play, and Blue Mug were a couple of my favorite events.
The Masquerade and Ball!

The best part, however, is just hanging out, and seeing all the fans that attend; my friends, and all the new people I meet.
The Gathering is just that.. a gathering. A gathering of lots of great people from all over the world, just hanging out and having fun. All in the name of Gargoyles.
It's something I look forward to every year.

I can't wait to see everyone in Las Vegas for 2006! Come hang out with us!

~Nikki/Hecate~
(If anyone's interested: When I do finish my more detailed con report, I'll post it here: http://www.y2hecate.com/Gathering2004/ )

Arno writes...

(Below you will find my Gathering diary, as it is. In its original version it is actually more or less integrated with a multiple page photo gallery, and part of a larger diary on my visit of Canada. This entire setup makes it very difficult to post the diary somewhere without the pictures or sub-pages. I have opted to copy and much of the relevant text into the submission form in order to post it here. Existing out of its original context, the result might be a bit confusing, so please bear with me.)

FRIDAY

Friday was the first proper day of the Gathering. It began with sleeping in late for most of us, considering the time we had gone to bed the night before. The exception was MAui. She had to get up early to work on the Clan Olympics with Abram Wintersmith. As a result most of the morning had already disappeared by the time we were up and about. By that time Robert, also our roomie, had shown up as well, swelling our ranks further.

One of our first acts of the day was to get registered at the registration desk. Again, a lot of familiar faces, and some new ones, but I have to say, I liked all the new faces I met.

We registered ourselves as a team for the Clan Olympics under the name "Arcadia International" ("We don't suck!"). Our members represented Canada, the United States of America, Great Brittain and The Netherlands. It was a team with too many members so we needed to rotate, but that turned out to work just fine as there was always some other team in need of a spare player. The Clan Olympics was a major event this year, and ended up dominating our weekend. Good thing it was a lot of fun.

At some point we decided to go to have breakfast/lunch. As we walked out ('we' being Robert, Dubble, Countess and myself) we walked right into a huge group of Gathering-attendants who all were just leaving for breakfast/lunch. The group was far too large to remember, but random names would be Hudson, Chris Rogers, Kaelyan, Cat, Mandolin, a bunch of people I know by face, not by name, and a bunch of people I don't remember at all. Awash in the sudden current, the self-appointed "Dweeby section of the group", we followed them around to a corner restaurant who gladly wanted to feed us, but only outside, where there was still room. The personel was quite friendly. It seems that for some reason, wherever Gargoyles fans go, everyone seems to like them. What is it about us? ;)

After all this the Gathering started proper, starting with the opening ceremonies, and then through the MGT3K event to the second Clan Olympics event. The second event? Indeed. The first had already been sprung at us during the opening ceremonies. A very daring move indeed.

Unfortunately Countess and Beedoo! missed most of this. Countess had to pick up Beedoo! from the airport as the opening ceremonies started and returned very late due to a delay. But with Beedoo! there at least our room was now completely present.

I recall that at one point, we went too bed. Way too late, again.

--- The registration desk, manned and womaned by BrooklynX, Rob and Siryn, was a very active place at the start of the Gathering, so much so that people gathered there for the largest part of the day. Aside from regular registration there was the seperate registration for the Clan Olympics beside it. No one could register without at least hearing of the event.
(Actually, I think the man's name was Rob. I know what his online handle is, more or less, but I can't even begin to spell it. ;) )

--- At the registration desk we also met the camera team sent there by Disney to film the Gathering. I was very pleasantly actually surprised to find that they were very open, very enthusiastic people. In my cynicism I had assumed they would just show up, shoot some film, collect their wages and leave. Instead, they really seemed to be there to want to get into the thing.

The camera team asked us to register again, so they'd have footage of registration. So we handed in our badges, then, in front of the camera, walked up to the desk, told our name and got handed a random badge and envelope. It was nothing like proper registration, unfortunately ("Arno! Hey Arno! What's you're last name!?"), and I wish they'd been there to film that instead. But we dutifully did our bit. A great actor I shall never be though.

They certainly filmed a lot of stuff. As I was talking to the camera people, signing away either my soul or my right not to want to appear on the DVD (yeah, right!) on some piece of legal paper, and suddenly I realised that I'd lost my program! But when I turned it around I found it again, under this enormous camera, being filmed for the DVD. I am so proud. Sadly, though, I lost it for real later that day.

--- As always the Gathering officially kicked off withthe opening ceremonies. In random order: we watched the movies, we listened to the stories. We listened to what the staff had in store for us, there was a fun tape with recorded messages from about a dozen(?) people involved with Gargoyles on it (as with Ed Asner's letter at the Gathering in LA, 2001, I can't help but notice what a kind man he seems to be), Gorebash received a well-deserved fandom award and at some point the opening ceremonies even got hijacked by the Clan Olympics.

After the chaos caused by this died down the opening ceremonies continued as usual. Further notable parts included the release date and further information on the Gargoyles DVD and Chris Roger's plans for the future of the Gathering which were, to say the least, fascinating.

--- During the opening ceremonies the whole thing got hijacked by the Clan Olympics. MAui and Abram Wintersmith stepped to the front of the room, stoically dropping cue cards declaring the opening ceremonies to be taken over. Truthfully, It was a hillarious thing to happen, and I must say, a brave thing to do for both them as well as the Gathering staff, who no doubt had to OK this rather unconventional idea.

So there we were, participating in the first event already, Jess and Dubble grabbing balls from a box and Robert stuffing them down my shirt for all he was worth, all this in front of the entire assembly of fans as well as the camera crew.

Sadly, I have no pictures of the actual event itself. I was too busy getting balls stuffed down my shirt.

--- Beedoo! arrived hours later than she was supposed to, but fortunately just in time to do the traditional "hanging out in our room" thing with us again.

SATURDAY

The second day of the Gathering was the only full day of Gathering planned. As such, it was filled with activities, most of which I did not have a chance to attend.

As stated earlier, the Clan Olympics dominated our weekend, and it continued doing so. One thing it did was force us to get up relatively early (once again, even earlier for MAui), allowing us to have much more day at our disposal as we would have had otherwise. The whole day consisted of walking around, looking at things, meeting up with people, voting on the artshow, voting on the art show again only properly this time, all that fitted around the two impressive Clan Olympics events: Trivia Torture and Really Hard Pictionary.

I did not manage to visit many (or any) panels that day, though I did go see the radio show. We also, as traditional, did not go to the banquet, since some of our group have finances that will not allow such an expenditure. On the other hand, most people seem to have missed the Karaoke singing following the masquerade, and that's certainly their loss.

--- Three years ago I met young Becca Morgan at the Gathering in LA, 2001. She threw a cat at me, numerous times. This seems to have left quite an impression on her as this year, when she finally showed up again, she had insisted on bringing a cat to throw at me. As the old toy was lost a new one had to be bought for the sole purpose of being thrown at me. Believe me, the money wasn't wasted.

--- The first Clan Olympics event of the day was Trivia Torture, possible the most professionally executed one of all. MAui had worked hard (and stayed up late) designing and printing professional cards for this game, while the way this conventionroom was set up could not be more perfect for this game.

The rules were complicated when explained but simple while playing: each team assigned a team member to sit on a chair below. This team member would not play, they would be the 'hostage'. Above each hostage three circular cards with entertaining text were stuck to the wall. These acted as a form of 'points'. If the 'points' of a team reached zero, ie, all the cards were removed, the hostage would be tortured either with spraypainted hair, or various disgusting combinations of food to eat. We put Robert down there (who bravely volunteered). Surplus Arcadia International member Dubble played for another team and promptly got sat down there as well, making sure we'd lose even if we won. ;)

The game centered around questions asked (from professionally designed cards, of course) by either Abram or MAui. The question would be either Gargoyles trivia or 'regular' trivia question. A member of the first team to hold up a piece of paper with a legible and correct answer would then get to step down and remove a 'point' from one of the teams.

Intermixed with all this were bonus cards which could do either good or harm, and the Spirits, members of teams which were previously eliminated from the game and who could interfere with the game at their apparent discretion.

Arcadia International eventually won the event through Spirit intervention at the expense of the Green Dragons. There's no saying for sure whether we would not have won otherwise, but I will say this though: the Green Dragons were good. Very good!

--- The second Clan Olympics event of the day was "Really Hard Pictionary", which lived up quite well to its rather presumptious name. Really Hard Pictionary was, well, really hard. Try drawing "It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine". Try drawing "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons". Believe me, it's even harder than it might seem.

By popular demand the game was continued even after all the scores were awarded, just for fun. I'll note that Robert and Flanker turned out to be very good at making people guess the right phrase. Absolute highlight was Flanker drawing a schetchy big fat gargoyle to indicate the word "Broadway". The Gathering was probably the only place in the world where this would work.

--- After the Really Hard Pictionary event of the Clan Olympics each team was given a box and provided with a source of markers of all sorts of colours. The box was to be used in the next and final event, the Scavenger Hunt, and we were to decorate it as we saw fit.

The decorating was taken care of by the two most artistic team members available, Countess and Beedoo!. Countess did some terrific lettering, while Beedoo! drew some cute pictures of the characters of our team. To them goes nearly all the credit for a fine box indeed. Myself, I went to the radio play as it was being decorated, and thus my only contribution was the addition of the Dutch flag among the three other flags of our respective countries.

--- As the box was being decorated and I was about to make my way to the radio play, this person here walked into the hotel. I don't know his proper name, I don't even know his face, I just know that he went by the name of 'Korul' and that this was the most amazing costume I had ever seen. Needless to say, he was there for the masquerade later that day.

--- I went to the radio play expecting to find Keith David there playing the role of Goliath. Unfortunately, he still had not arrived. The radio play was still pretty fun though, because the reworked 'original' script of 'The Journey' worked well and because there was some pretty good voice acting there. Clearly after all those years people have become quite good at this sort of thing.

The people who stood out the most, though, I thought, were Chris Rogers as MacBeth and Eden as Margot Yale. They were amazing, bickering with each other. "Madam, they burned witches like you in the middle ages!" "You, sir, live in a fantasy world!" If anything of the radio play ends up on the DVD that had better be in it.

--- As not all of us could afford the banquet, we ventured out to find some food of our own. This entailed my first trek through downtown Montreal. As it turned out, almost all I would see of Montreal on the days of the Gathering I would see that day. Everything we needed was conveniently placed in one single street.

--- We finally found food in a Hard Rock Cafe, situated in the middle of a Brazilian street party of all things. With all the bustle it took them rather a while to serve us, but we had fun entertaining ourselves.

--- This year's masquerade was the most spectacular I have seen. Granted, all other years, for one reason or another, I missed the grand entrances, but even then, the quality of costumes was very high, as was the quantity. It was a very nice touch that nearly the entire staff was in costume as well. I was quite impressed.

Overall winner was, of course, the man known as Korul. The detail on his gargoyle costume was amazing, particularly the moving wings and mouth. It was very impressive and a very well-deserved win.

--- After the masquerade came the Karaoke night. Sadly, due to some apparent technical difficulties taking up a bit of time, many people had already wandered off. Which is their loss.

SUNDAY

Sunday was the wrap-up of the Gathering, but a very busy day nontheless. To begin with there was the final Clan Olympics event: the Scavenger Hunt, a fitting finale which had us exhausted and yet hyped up before 11 AM.

After this came the closing ceremonies, which I have to admit seemed a little of an anti-climax. Greg Weisman had already left, as had the camera team. And really, what else was there to say that "we're done"? Nevertheless, the Gathering staff put together an excelent con altogether, and they deserve to be praised for it.

In between the Scavenger Hunt and the CLosing Ceremonies I happened to stumble upon a Mug-A-Guest with Keith David. Now, I'm not really one to go listen to celebreties. I'm quite sure they are interesting, just no more so than my friends who I only see once a year if that. I decided to stay and listen, though. I found there that Keith David, whom I knew next to nothing from, was a very intelligent, very thoughtful and very kind man. I was very impressed and I hope the camera team got some of it all.

Also, nearly everyone at the Closing Ceremonies will remember Robert and Jess peddling a sign-up sheet for an impromptu game of laser-tag. To those that did not sign up, or show up: you missed out. Really. Definately.

--- Once again Clan Olympics had us get up at the crack of dawn (also known as about 8:15 AM) in order to take part in the one Clan Olympics event us Arcadians actually consistently do well: the Scavenger Hunt.

The Scavenger hunt involved finding items from a list and putting them in the box we prepared the day before. Some items were simple, others were difficult, and a few turned out to be impossible: A can of Lysol, a bird, any bird, three different flavors of lip gloss, diapers, any vehicle floormat, one standard #2 pencil, a non-hotel blanket, a MALE con-goer with a 2004 Gathering shirt not from our team (who was to strip off the shirt and toss it in the box), a hardcover book, a set of balls from the first Clan Olympics event, a shotglass, three rolls of packed toilet paper, a disposable camera with no photos left on it, a plunger and a note from any hotel staff member saying "I did this for the Clan Olympics".

And then there was a list of bonus items, held by MAui who had hidden herself somewhere in the hotel. These items were for extra points: some wooden thing called the "Official 2x4 of the 1998 Hock-Fest", some bonus bags, three squishy soccer balls, as many different business cards as we could find and a special guest or Gathering staff member to stand in our box for 15 seconds.

It was a very exciting and very exhausting game which had Gathering attendants running chaotically through the hotel. We got a cleaning staff member to give us toilet paper and write us a note, I stripped in my Gathering Shirt in exchange for a vehicle floor mat and a disposable camera for another team, and then I generally ran around with no list, no team member and half an idea of what to look for. The box filled marvelously nontheless. I am only disappointed not to have been there to see Kanthara stand in our box.

Fun fact: the Gathering Hotel had only one plunger in the entire building. And they'd lost it.

--- During the closing ceremonies the winners of the Clan Olympics were announced. Considering the scores and our results at the Scavenger hunt, it was not really a surprise anymore, but Arcadia International won! Mind, with some help from the spirits, but even then, I know my teammates certainly played quite well.

So, we came forward and accepted our prizes and the honour. Our prizes consisted of a circular piece of cardboard saying we won and four Clan Olympics T-shirts to split between the five of us. Look at us showing our Arcadian pride.

After closing ceremonies I got another shirt from Chris Rogers for pre-registering. Very kind of him. Withg the Gathering T-shirt, the Evil Makes Me Sad T-shirt and the Clan Olympics prize, it was my fourth new shirt that weekend. I'd started seriously regretting bringing shirts at all.

--- The other major event of the day: Lasertag!

Saturday evening we passed a lasertag place on our way back to the hotel. Now, Robert had, at earlier Gatherings, already expressed a desire for us to play Lasertag. So, he went inside for a moment, asked for information and came out with the knowledge that a group of exactly 30 people would get a good discount.

So, he set about organising a group of exactly 30 people. He and Jess went round the lines for Keith David and pre-registering after the closing ceremonies and collected names of people who wanted to come. It took some doing, but they actually managed to fill their list. Even Keith David signed up.

Of course, around the time people were to gather in the lobby things went all pearshaped. Some didn't show up, others wanted to join after all. Some would arrive late. Keith David was still eating with his wife. In the end we left in two groups, one of twenty-one and another group of straglers that would hopefully make thirty.

Robert became nervous.

The walk to the Lasertag place was sort of an event itself. Keeping a group that size together on the sidewalks of Montreal was no small matter, especially considering that we were late and needed to keep up a good pace. Being Robert's roomies more or less automatically assigned us the task of keeping the group together a bit. Now we know what sheep dogs feel like! It was an entertaining walk, though.

It took some time for the rest of us to arrive, but when they did we were with 33, though sadly without Keith David. It turned out they could fit 32 in their maze, so Jess kindly voluntered to sit the whole game out. She really missed out for the rest of us. She's too kind (but don't tell her that ;) ).

The game itself was brilliant, and I'm sure the massive amount of people we brought helped a lot. It was pandemonium and I think everyone had great fun. There were three rounds, one with everyone against everyone, one with two teams, and one with two teams protecting two members, a king and a queen. It turned out Robert was the Lasertag champion among us. No wonder he wanted to play.

I hope we'll do this again some time.

TopMan writes...

Top Man's Super-fantastical Super-long Con-virgirnal (Vir-journal

Disclaimer: Many of the people mentionned in this were also ConVirgins and n00bs, so chances are you've never heard of them/me and barely remember them/me from the convention, if at all. Hopefully, this will help you get more acquainted with us ^^

Someday the Nth of Whenever

I was browsing the web, and *somehow* came across the Gathering Of The Gargoyles 2004 website. I looked at it and thought "Jeez, what weird kinds of people would go to this?" Then I read the page, and thought "Jeez, I would go to this!!"

A couple of days after Someday the Nth of Whenever:

I talked to Reusch about it, thinking she'd laugh in my face. Instead, she said "awesome!" Everything was set ^^

Friday, August 6th:

Well, the day started off with Reusch and I getting a lift over to the hotel from my dad. The convention wasn't due to start for a little while, which we planned on purpose so we could wake ourselves up with a Tim Hortons french vanilla. We ended up eating brunch there, and it was very nice, except at the very end, when we were sitting outside with our coffees, much to my disgust and Carolynn's delight I was pooped on by a bird -_-. Not the proudest moment in my life. Luckily it was just my hand, so I washed it off easily, and we decided to head over to the hotel and scope out the inside.

In doing so we found out that Registration table was already open, so, feeling VERY antisocial, we sort of tiptoed up to the counter and waited until someone approached us, then we half-whispered our names and sat down at an empty table feeling foolish and admiring the packages. Suddenly, I get Abe from the table going "Heeeey, Topman!" and Sarah The Great is asking us if we want to join the Clan Olympics. I had already been considering it, as it sounded fun, and Abe was there to encourage me, and Reusch was all up for it, so I was close to saying yes. The only problem was we had only two people. So I asked her to put a question mark down next to our names. About 5 minutes later I figured "Ah, what the hell" and signed us up. She said there were two others needing a team and asked if we didn't mind pairing up with them, which of course we didn't. This was the make-or-break moment where half the convention could end up being spent with complete and utter weirdos.

And fortunately for us, we did! Nezumi and David were great fun from the get-go, and we hung out together the entire convention, but more on that later, because Abe ruined our good mood by making us think up a name. After five minutes of weird conversation, we decided on "The Mexanadians" (despite the fact that Nez was from Texas, not Mexico, and Texanadians would have been just as easy, for some reason we stuck with that.) We were so proud of our bizarre name, that we were grinning right up until the moment Abe said "Okay, so now we need your team motto." And we all went: "MOTTO!? *GROAN*" So, we decided that a hearty groaning sound would be a good motto for us. Unfortunately, for the moment we were going to have to leave our new teammates, as Con Virgin 101 (which Reusch and I felt we definitely needed to attend) was starting, while Nez and David decided to attend something else, which escapes me at the moment.

Con Virgin 101 was a blast. We arrived 15 minutes late due to our meeting with Nez and David, and apparently we weren't the first to interrupt Sapphire's panel, but since there were so few of us she just ended up starting over from the beginning. She talked about how everyone's insane (which is true), and then showed off her impressive art and french skills with a hilarious little scribbling. ("Bonjour, je m'appelle Velociraptor" XD) Of course, there can't really be ALL that much to talk about for introducing new people to cons, so after about 15 minutes, she realized that we had a whole spare hour. So all hell broke loose (that is to say as much hell as can break loose with about 7 people) and we started drawing on the board and chatting. We met ChameleonGirl there too, who is a great and funny gal, and there was a couple which I believe were French Canadian, and unfortunately I never caught their names, but they were nice and friendly. I felt a bit bad about having made little comments throughout Sapphire's presentation, because she seemed a bit miffed by all the interruptions, but I hope she realized I did it because I had warmed up to her and the room, and wanted to join into the discussions, maybe not in the most appropriate of ways. If you're reading this, I hope I didn't offend you in any way =S

Next up was the voice acting seminar, where Reusch and I got to see Greg Weisman in person for the first time. We learned here that Keith David wasn't going to make it, which was a little disappointing because I had been hoping to hear him spout a number of Goliath lines during this panel, but I soon got over it. Greg was a great speaker, and had a lot of information to give out, and I thought it was a very interesting panel considering, as a child actor, albeit not a very famous one, I had done (small amounts of) voice acting in the past and wanted to see what he had to say. At the end he was having people read the skits and coaching them, and Reusch SOMEHOW managed to convince me to join in for the last skit, provided she did too. I ended up getting Brooklyn, and Reusch, this time to MY delight, got Hudson (which was funny, as we are both avidly averse to Hudson's character). It was fun, although I'm almost positive I read WAY too fast, and then felt confused because Greg didn't mention anything to me (it either wasn't as bad as I thought, he didn't notice, or I was a hopeless case). Sidenote, whoever did the first Demona reading (I believe it was CrzyDemona?) and the Griff reader (Michael?) were AMAZING!!!

Unfortunately, we found out the Radio Play Auditions weren't available for viewing, so it was either the Costuming Seminar or the RPG panel. Reusch didn't want to touch the Costuming Seminar (we had just spent two solid weeks working on my Thailog costume, which was a beast to make) so we went to the RPG panel. Unfortunately, we had only dabbled in RPGs (read: RPG, as in one) so we didn't understand the panel at all, and decided we should probably leave before we went nuts in the room trying to pretend that we knew what we were talking about.

We went up to the con room and watched a couple of episodes, I seem to remember Kingdom and Hound Of Ulster. At some point we ended up finding Nez and Dave and decided that during this extended break we should find some food somewhere so that we wouldn't start stomach-rumbling during the opening ceremonies. We went to the McDonalds that was found, by whom I don't know, by going through the hotel restaurant into a bank/business building, then down the escalator into an underground mall. The service there was TERRIBLE. First off, the girl at the counter AND the guy in the back CONSTANTLY disregarded the beeping of the fry machine, so they burnt the fries TWICE. Reusch's salad took at LEAST 15 minutes to make, and they ended up giving her the wrong kind of chicken, despite the counter-girl asking twice. They neglected to give her a fork or salad dressing. She later found out that the chicken wasn't cut properly, so she returned to the counter, asked for a knife, was given a fork. David, meanwhile, was waiting for a double big mac, and they ended up accidentally making a single big mac, and then didn't notice until he was waiting for the food for five minutes. So he got to wait even longer. They gave us a complimentary hamburger, which I ate, but it wasn't all that good, and definitely didn't make up for the awful service.

We all headed back to the Opening Ceremonies, which were a blast. The staff presented themselves, and then during Liz's speech, Abe and MAui surprised us all by "taking over". They announced the teams, and then shocked us by saying that the first event would be NOW. Good thing we'd eaten =) Reusch and I had to grab the balls from the bin, and then pass them over the line to Nez, who stuffed them into David's hole-filled shirt. While Reusch grabbed balls from the bin, I took the strategy of picking up any and all balls that were dropped by others onto the floor. It must have worked moderately well, because we were in third place by the end. After all the excitement died down (I felt bad for Liz... the beginning of her speech was cut short, and then we were all still catching our breath for the end) Greg presented the DVD info (w00t for December 7th) told his amusing stories (I was shocked when EVERYONE around me shouted out "It's Better Than Barney", but I'll be prepared to join in next time ^_~), played a tape with a bunch of people who worked on Gargoyles (Keith David was hilarious, and Ed Asner was funny too, but he also said some very deep, nostalgic stuff about his being on the show and wanting to come to a Gathering that kind of made me sad, the way only nostalgia can), and then played all of his videos, which for some must be a bit boring now, but for me was quite interesting, as this was the first time I was seeing them. He then played an audio tape of The Last, the not-so-long lost Atlantis episode, which far too many of us took far too dirtily, but for good reasons!

After Opening Ceremonies came Mystery Gargoyles Theatre, which Reusch and I didn't quite understand at first, but then we figured out it was just people making jokes about the show as it's playing, which is what we do anyways. We also met some new friends there, Annie and Catherine, who, while we didn't see them much aside from the banquet, were really cool people and great fun to talk to. Jade Griffin also came off as being really cool, but I never really had a conversation with her until Sunday, which is a bit of a shame.

After an hour or so of heckling, the Clan Olympics people were kicked out of the room so we couldn't see what was being set up. It ended up being some kooky toss-the-ball game, with some very inventive twists, such as the Spirits and the flip-over rule, and the tic-tac-toe. I suck at tossing balls, and although two of my three shots came EXTREMELY close (one actually bounced off the middle of the chair that the target was sitting on, but never actually hit the target) but none succeeded, which made me feel a bit useless. We almost got a tic-tac-toe, which would have scored us some bonus points, but we didn't end up doing so. If only I had gone last instead of second, I MIGHT have been able to at least accomplish that... nonetheless, Reusch, David and Nez had enough skill to pull us into 2nd place! Congrats to them.

Saturday, Sunday and Monday hopefully coming before Tuesday ^^